I love the smell of blog wars in the morning!

Acting as Facebook often does to Google, a new site started by former Engadget editor Josh Topolsky just hired away yet another passel of tech journalists from the giant gadget news and reviews organization.

Editorial movement is not uncommon on tech news sites, but this level of it from one site to another is somewhat, um, aggressive.

Engadget, which is owned by AOL, is one of the largest tech-focused sites on the Web. Topolsky left his editor-in-chief job there in March.

By April, he had grabbed eight prominent Engadget staffers who had left the huge tech site amid editorial tensions, in order to start a new competing gadget property for the well-funded sports content start-up SB Nation.

Now, sources said, Topolsky has added Thomas Ricker, an Engadget senior editor, who had run its European coverage; Sean Hollister, a senior associate editor, who ran its West coast team; and Joseph Flatley, an associate editor.

Also hired: Thomas Houston, editor-in-chief of Switched, an AOL tech site that was recently subsumed into its Huffington Post Media unit; and Dieter Bohn, who was editor-in-chief for the Smartphone Experts network of sites, including Crackberry and others.

And other possible new hires soon from Engadget: Another European editor, Vlad Savov, and writer Jacob Schulman.

The Topolsky-helmed site is still unnamed but is now operating as This Is My Next. It already has 16 writers, compared to Engadget’s two dozen, and is set to debut in the fall with a new name.

It will be the first content expansion at the Washington, D.C., SB Nation, which completed a $10.5 million Series C round, led by Khosla Ventures, in the fall.

Before that, SB Nation had already raised about $13 million in total venture funding from Accel Partners, Allen & Company and Comcast Interactive Capital, as well as from angel investors such as Ted Leonsis and others in Silicon Valley.

Another AOL link: SB Nation was founded by former AOLer, CEO Jim Bankoff, who had bought Engadget for AOL many years ago.

Engadget Editorial Director Josh Frulinger said that the impact of the talent drain on Engadget — mostly from This Is My Next raids — has been small, since the site has also been aggressively hiring.

“We’re past the people leaving and into celebrating what we’ve accomplished in six short months, and we welcome any new competition,” he said. “Dana Wollman, Brian Heater, Myriam Joire, Zach Honig, Joe Pollicino, Richard Lawler, Michael Gorman, Sean Buckley, Joseph Volpe, Brad Molen, Terrence O’Brien, Amar Toor and Sharif Skar — all brought on in the past six months — are your Engadget stars of tomorrow.”

To prove it, AOL said unique visitors for Engadget in June were up 1.1 percent from May and will be up again for July. In recent reports, the site had 14 million unique monthly visitors.

Two of Index Ventures’ high-profile partners–Danny Rimer and Mike Volpi–are opening a new Silicon Valley office for the Europe-based venture firm in September.

The move is actually more of a return home for both men, now located in London, who had lived and worked at tech epicenter for much of their careers.

Among other things, before their stints at Index, Rimer was an Internet analyst at Hambrecht & Quist and also at the now-defunct Barksdale Group, while Volpi was an exec at Cisco.

BoomTown had been hearing about the possibility of the move for months, but Rimer and Volpi finally confirmed it in an interview yesterday.

“We thought we would be better positioned to support our entrepreneurs by being in Silicon Valley,” said Volpi (pictured here), who left the area when he became CEO of the then-hyped Joost premium online video service. “Having two solid investors from Index on the West Coast was important, as opposed to a chipshot.”

Volpi noted that of Index’s $1.3 billion in investments in 173 companies, $400 million was in 58 U.S.-based start-ups. In addition, the firm had helped another 35 move here.

There are currently nine investing partners at Index, which is actually headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

Rimer noted that initially it will just be him and Volpi here, as well as some support staff. But it was likely they would expand their office, which will be located in either San Francisco or around Palo Alto, Calif.

“It has been a challenge to be a European firm and also be present in the Valley and be considered an insider here,” said Rimer (pictured here), who often traveled to California. “There is a lot to have an immediate ability to be face-to-face with our companies.”

Recent investments by Index in California include Flipboard, Swipely, Boku and Factual.

Rimer and Volpi said the move did not mean deals were only to be found in Silicon Valley, as Index is not focused on geographical investing.

In addition, the pair will continue their focus on cloud computing, infrastructure and social, wherever the investments were to be found.

“We’re not coming to the U.S. to do only U.S. deals,” said Volpi. “But there is a lot to be said for being part of the daily mix in Silicon Valley.”

In other words: Party at Mary Meeker’s house!

(The well-known Morgan Stanley analyst has also recently moved to the West Coast from New York to join Kleiner Perkins.)

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.

Sources tell me that the mobile social network, which lets you tell your friends where you are, is lining up a new round of financing to bolster the $1.35 million it raised last August. CEO Dennis Crowley declined to comment.

I don’t know how much the year-old company intends to raise or the valuation it’s looking for. But speculating about both is a fun pastime for venture capitalists, who agree on one thing: The company won’t have any problem attracting suitors.

“Everybody and their mother is humping their leg,” says a VC who readily admits to Foursquare infatuation. So many investors are besotted that the chatter can get feverish. Another VC passes along a rumor that an investor offered to buy into the company at a $100 million valuation.

A more reasonable guess: New York-based Foursquare will wind up bringing in a West Coast-based VC, who will lead a round in the $10 million range that will value the company at something like $40 million. Foursquare’s first round valued the company at more than $6 million.

So what’s the appeal? Like plenty of other social media start-ups, Foursquare has minimal revenue. But it has a great story, which contains plenty of allusions to Twitter.

Like Twitter, Foursquare was founded by an entrepreneur who already built a start-up and sold it to Google (GOOG). And like Twitter, Foursquare launched at South by Southwest to some fanfare, and has seen its user base increase at breathtaking velocity.

When Crowley raised his first round of financing from O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Union Square Ventures in August, Foursquare had some 50,000 users. That total is now approaching 600,000, boosted by a burst of 100,000 sign-ups over the last 10 days.

And while Foursquare, like Twitter, doesn’t have real revenue to speak of, it does have a notion of how to get some. It is working on tie-ups with local merchants, who can reward users who “check in” at restaurants, bars, etc.–and by doing so, provide free advertising for those establishments.

Foursquare still doesn’t do anything for me, but the service is doing just fine without buy-in from a middle-aged dude who doesn’t go out at night. And because Foursquare is a fun, buzzy story to write about, it gets written about a lot.

The real question for Foursquare: How will the start-up keep Twitter and Facebook from rolling over it? Twitter added its location feature this month, and Facebook is reportedly adding its own in April.

Both these companies have plenty on their plate, so it’s possible they won’t spend much effort chasing Foursquare’s niche. Still, it’s hard to see room for three social networks that let you broadcast your whereabouts to your pals. But that’s not dissuading guys who can write big checks.

AOL will report its fourth-quarter earnings results tomorrow before the markets open–thanks, CEO Tim Armstrong, from us folks on the West Coast–marking its first Wall Street outing as a newly independent company.

And Wall Street is definitely wary about this close encounter of the first kind.

AOL (AOL), which spun off from parent Time Warner (TWX) in mid-December, has been mightily trying to make itself relevant and innovative, as well as trying to fix its lagging business.

Under former Google (GOOG) exec Armstrong, the focus has been squarely on content, and advertising to sell against that content, which remains a dicey proposition.

And though online ad sales are looking up, most think it is still a long way from the turn AOL needs to begin growing in any significant way.

To help things along, Armstrong has slashed its workforce by 2,300 employees and has been trying to unload a variety of its less important business units.

On a consensus basis, analysts expect AOL to report an adjusted profit of 62 cents on $763.5 million in revenue in the quarter.

That is why AOL stock, which opened trading at $23.67, has remained around that price, reflecting the widespread wait-and-see attitude toward the company by investors.

One query I hope those not-so-good-at-asking-interesting-questions analysts ask on the call: What’s up with renewing its search deal with Google or is Microsoft (MSFT) its new partner?

Until tomorrow, here’s a video of an interview I did with Armstrong right before AOL spun off last year, where I tried to ask good questions:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100202/aol-earnings-tomorrow-are-you-there-wall-street-its-me-tim-armstrong/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090817/top-ad-sales-exec-on-west-coast-departs-yahoo/ http://allthingsd.com/20090817/top-ad-sales-exec-on-west-coast-departs-yahoo/#comments Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:37:26 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=17697

One of Yahoo’s highest-ranking premium advertising sales execs–David Dickman, VP of West Coast sales–is leaving the company, people familiar with the situation said.

Sources said Dickman, who will leave Yahoo at the end of the month after three years at the company, is reportedly going to Time Warner (TWX) unit Warner Bros. to work in digital sales.

Well liked at Yahoo (YHOO), Dickman was impacted in a sales reorganization done in the spring.

At the time, Atlanta-based regional sales VP Mitch Spolan was named to lead Yahoo’s North American field sales, consolidating its display ad sales groups, which had previously been split between the East and West Coasts.

Before that, Dickman ran the Western sales and another exec the Eastern sales, serving big display advertisers. The latter exec took over agency sales, while Dickman remained running sales on the West Coast, reporting to Spolan.

Dickman’s departure comes after another top Yahoo display ad exec, Todd Taplin (pictured here), left last week. He was regional VP of sales in New England and Canada, responsible for big Yahoo display advertising accounts like Fidelity Investments in Boston.

Taplin–who was also well regarded at Yahoo–took a job at Collective Media in New York, as its new Chief Revenue Officer.

Flux at the Yahoo ad sales group in the U.S.–which accounts for most of the Internet giant’s revenues–will be closely watched by Wall Street right now since it is also charged with selling premium search ads for both Yahoo and Microsoft (MSFT) under the recent deal they struck. Yahoo is also aiming to turbocharge its premium graphical ad sales business.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090817/top-ad-sales-exec-on-west-coast-departs-yahoo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090710/how-to-kill-the-rest-of-your-friday/ http://allthingsd.com/20090710/how-to-kill-the-rest-of-your-friday/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:25:50 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=9181 Maybe you’re in New York and need to waste an hour or two before you scoot out of the office. Maybe you’re on the West Coast and have a full half day to go. But regardless of where you work, it’s a Friday in July. And you’re not getting any real work done at this point.

My time-killing suggestion for the day: AdWeek’s “AdFreak” blog, which is packed with TV ads you probably haven’t seen. Did you know, for instance, that the Kool-Aid man was back?

Or perhaps you’ve wondered what a North Korean beer ad looks like (though honestly, you don’t need to go the full two-and-a-half minutes on this one; 20 seconds is fine):

Or maybe you want to see a guy doing a backflip in a wheelchair, as in this spot for Howstuffworks.com:

One word of warning: Don’t bother with the “Eat Canadian” ad, which is earnest and dull. Save that for Monday, as you’re easing into the week. Enjoy your weekend!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090710/how-to-kill-the-rest-of-your-friday/feed/ 0