Asked about last year’s failed Hulu sales effort and expectations he would move on, Kilar said he sees “many winners” among Hulu and competitors like YouTube, Netflix, Amazon and Apple. “Online video and online video advertising are enormous,” he said.

Last year’s aborted sales effort, Kilar said, was “far more public than I would have liked. I’m a private guy.” Is he surprised he’s still at Hulu? “I’m not.”

Will he be leaving Hulu any time soon? Kilar urged watchers to look at his history, which includes two employers — Amazon and Hulu — since graduating school. “I’m not the kind of guy who dabbles in a lot of things,” he said. “Just judge me on my history, and the team on the history.”

As for the economics of Hulu, Kilar noted (as he has before) that the company made $420 million last year, which was 60 percent more than 2010, but less than the company had expected after a “soft” third quarter.

Hulu Plus, which Kilar described as being in “investment mode,” pays content owners more per user per month than any of its competitors, Kilar said. “The dollars going back to content owners on Hulu Plus are extremely generous.”

Kilar downplayed content negotiations with News Corp., NBC and Disney, the large media companies who own significant parts of Hulu. “Keep in mind we have 330 content partners, three of which we have an equity relationship with,” he said. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

It’s not even 8 am PT yet here, but we’ve got a full day of speakers at D: Dive Into Media, and first up is Hulu CEO Jason Kilar. I’m sure we’ll hear him talk about the future of Web video, not to mention his own position and that of his company in said future.

Earlier:
8:08 am: We’re getting just a bit of a late start, as SoCal traffic is messing with the schedule just a bit.

8:19 am: I think we are close now. Attendees are grabbing seats.

8:24 am: Looks like you still have some time to catch up on your favorite show on Hulu. But it shouldn’t be too much longer now.

8:27 am: Here he is.

Peter: I’m a little surprised you are here (refers to memo a year ago that a lot of people thought would get Kilar canned).

Are you surprised you are still running Hulu?

Kilar: No, I am not.

You have to be a bit crazy to do this. He notes that the company was initially called Clown Co.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

8:28 am: What were you thinking when you wrote that memo?

Kilar encourages people to reread the memo. “I think it stands up today.” I actually think that when it comes to bundles, there is tremendous value, but you have to be very careful in how you construct that. Customers vote with their wallets.

8:30 am: Why print the memo?

When you are starting a new business, it’s important to explain yourselves. That was a very important moment for the company.

The entrepreneurial jouney is not a smooth one or an easy one.

8:31 am: Kafka: One of the reasons it was called Clown Co. was the idea that the media companies couldn’t build a successful joint venture, and that the interests of the parents and the company would necessarily diverge.

8:32 am: Kilar: It’s not unique to the history of media. Kilar notes that TV was originally seen as a threat to the movie industry.

It turned out it was the best thing that ever could have happened to content companies. The Internet could be the same way.

8:33 am: Kafka: The broadcast content industry is now getting paid in the form of retransmission fees, and distributing its shows in many forums. Is there the same need for Hulu to exist as there was four years ago?

Kilar: I think there’s more reason for Hulu to exist now than there was four years ago.

8:34 am: Some of the content isn’t there, or is being “windowed.” You have to wait eight days for some shows. Are customers still as happy?

Kilar: There’s actually more content. In addition, we have Hulu Plus (the paid service), which allows customers to get content sooner, and with more content.

Kafka: Is the subscription business a profitable one?

Kilar: Clearly still in investment mode, but a lot of opportunity to make money.

It allows us to pay the content community more per user per month than any other service. “We’re thrilled about that business. It’s a very scalable service. It’s our fastest growing service.”

8:37 am: Kafka: You have to pay for TV, but not for laptop. Isn’t that confusing?

Kilar: Agrees, the distinction might be confusing to our grandkids down the road.

“There’s no doubt there is this transition happening.”

8:38 am: Kafka: How do you think the content owners think about the value Hulu delivers?

If I were in their shoes.

You’ve got this amazingly large business (broadcast TV) that is very robust and very healthy, so you are constantly thinking about that.

At the same time, you can’t be blind to what you are hearing from consumers.

If I were in their shoes, I’d balance the obligation to that existing business, but plant seeds that allow things to bear fruit for the long term.

This is not dissimilar to the introduction of television. People used to go to movie houses three or four times a week to watch “premium content.”

8:44 am: Kafka: What about YouTube and others?

Kilar: There’s going to be many winners in this space. Online video and online advertising space.

Kafka: Why did owners put you on the block then?

Kilar: You should ask News Corp.’s Chase (Carey) this. (Carey is on stage later.)

It’s fair to say the process that happened last year. … We were approached by a company.

Kafka: Yahoo.

Kilar: We never commented on it.

Kafka: Yahoo.

Kilar: It was far more public than I would have liked. I’m a private guy.

Kafka: What do you think happened?

Kilar: Things change … people have different points of view.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t salacious.

Kafka: One thing that you heard was that the bids weren’t high enough and/or that the content owners weren’t willing to give a long enough rights deal to make it viable.

Could you ever sell this company or take it public? Can this work as a standalone company?

Kilar: We have 330 content partners, only three of which are investors in the company.

Kafka: You’ve said you are going to spend $500 million in content fees this year. Does that include money to main broadcasters?

Kilar: Yes. Main investment is in existing content, though spending a little on new, exclusive content. Gives them some healthy differentiation.

It’s not the thing, but it is an important thing.

Kafka: Is it important to have a lot of exclusive content?

Kilar: It’s important to have some exclusive content.

8:51 am: Kafka: Folks describe you as “rerun TV.” Are you OK with that?

Kilar: At end of day, we search for Hulu and Hulu Plus and see what consumers say. Kilar reads on Twitter a lot, but doesn’t post much.

8:52 am: Audience Q&A. Hulu said it brought in $420 million last year, but less than it had been on a pace to do.

Kilar: In Q3, specifically, the ad market was very soft. Things rebounded in Q4. “We’re pacing very well. I’m not going to talk about the financials of the business.”

Kilar said it was up 60 percent from the prior year, and ahead of its original plan for 2011, which was for $408 million.

Kafka: Will you stick around?

Kilar: I’ve only done two things. One was Amazon for nine years. The other is Hulu. I’m not the kind of guy that dabbles. I tend to go deep.

Kafka: Do you think you will be here in a year?

Kilar: Just judge me on my history.

Kafka: Very eloquent side step. I appreciate it.

8:55 am: TV everywhere. How does Hulu fit into that?

Kilar: Differentiation is important. When we think about services like TV Everywhere, which has been around as a theory for a while … Hulu Plus is designed to be different from TV Everywhere, which only has four or five episodes.

TV Everywhere is getting better, and will continue to, but Hulu Plus is designed to be different.

8:58 am: Hulu Plus for Apple TV?

Kilar: It’s a juicy question. I don’t have a juicy answer. We don’t talk about our product road map.

Q: Can we expect it in 2012?

Kilar: We don’t talk about our product road map.

The commercial was originally supposed to be kept under wraps until game day, but Gawker Media’s car blog, Jalopnik, spoiled the surprise last Friday. Honda put the full ad on YouTube early this morning. Jalopnik says Honda hired “The Hangover” writer/director Todd Phillips to create it.

In the spot, Broderick reprises his role from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” calling in sick from work in Los Angeles, instead of from high school in Chicago. Instead of crooning a karaoke version of “Danke Schoen” during a parade, this time Broderick gets caught up in a Chinese New Year parade. His CR-V is taken for a joy ride, not by garage attendants, but by a valet parker at a posh restaurant.

Here’s the spot, for those of you that would rather just watch it. Maybe … nine times?

It’s a recently discovered little number that Jim Henson did for Ma Bell, back in 1963.

In classic Henson form, it highlights the battle between man and machine, revealing each to be quite dependent on the other. And, of course, it is endearing and adorable.

The company posted it to its Web site and to YouTube this week.

According to AT&T, Henson made the video for a seminar being given to business owners on what was then a groundbreaking topic — data communications.

Thanks to my old CNET colleague Ed Moyer, whose post alerted me to the video. It almost makes up for missing Grover at CES.

As for AT&T’s earnings, they should be coming up in just a bit.

Quora set up a special page to live-stream video of Obama’s address at 6 pm PT on Tuesday. It’s asking users to submit and follow questions about economic and domestic policies.

Quora exec Marc Bodnick told users they must submit questions by Wednesday at 5 pm PT. He said an unspecified number of questions will be answered by the White House “in the coming days.”

Barack Obama has made a practice of engaging with Web communities on YouTube/Google+, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Quora is a relatively small site to get such attention; it has less than half a million monthly U.S. visitors according to public measures like Compete and Quantcast.

Founded by early Facebook employees, Quora started as a Q&A service, but recently has branched into Web curation.

U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra had previously used Quora to ask users questions about open government and emerging technologies.

In light of this month’s SOPA/PIPA debate, for instance, it ought to be very interesting to compare and contrast what Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman and YouTube head Salar Kamangar have to say about copyright and piracy. (Not that they were on the same page to begin with.)

But in addition to executives who help distribute media for a living, we also wanted to make sure we heard from content makers at Dive. We’ll have several, but none more famous than Neil Young.

One of the nice things about having a music icon join you onstage is that you don’t need to spend much time introducing him (though it’s easy enough to get the official and unofficial takes; and, courtesy of Kamangar’s YouTube, plenty of audiovisual reminders, which you can see at the bottom of this post).

That’s going to give us more time to have a freewheeling conversation: The man has a 40-plus-year career and is still making music and movies today, so there’s a lot of ground to cover. One digital topic I imagine we’ll certainly touch on: His long-running campaign to fix the way modern music sounds – not the songs themselves, but the way they’re recorded and distributed.

That isn’t the easiest sell, when lots of people seem content to listen to super-compressed iTunes files bleeding out of tiny, tinny, laptop speakers. But perhaps things are changing a bit: Dr. Dre and company sure have sold a lot of sort-of high-end Beats headphones in recent years.

Dive kicks off on the evening of Jan. 30, and we’ll have complete coverage here. If you want to join us in person in Laguna Niguel, Calif., grab a seat.

Would you like to read about foreign currency exchange and hedging programs? I know.

But Google would like Wall Street to think a bit about those topics, since it is blaming them for part of its Q4 earnings report shortfall. Google insists it had a great quarter, but both its revenue and earnings numbers came in well below the consensus.

One reason for that, Google says, is fluctuating currency rates: “Had foreign exchange rates remained constant from Q3 2011 through Q4 2011, our revenue in Q4 2011 would have been $239M higher,” the company says. Which means the company would have been much closer to investors’ revenue estimates, for starters.

But analysts on the earnings call didn’t want to spend time talking about FX — they wanted to talk about CPC. That’s “cost-per-click” for Google’s core search ad business, and it dropped 8 percent over the quarter. Google insists that is a number that they shouldn’t obsess about, since it will fluctuate based on changes Google makes to its ad products, and as long as overall revenue is going up, it’s not a problem.

That answer, which they gave over and over, didn’t take, though. And at one point, Larry Page asked, semi-seriously, for analysts to stop asking about CPC. The next question was about CPC.

————–
EARLIER
First look at Google Q4 earnings: $8.13 billion and earnings of $9.50. Wall Street was expecting much more — something like $8.4 billion and $10.50 a share.

Investors are behaving the way you might expect — they’ve dropped the company’s share price by 9 percent, to $581, in after-hours trading. Earlier today, GOOG was trading as high as $640.

“Google had a really strong quarter, ending a great year,” CEO Larry Page says, in a statement that doesn’t seem to acknowledge any weakness or slowdown. He also says Google+, the search giant’s answer to Facebook, is now up to 90 million users.

Google hired more than 1,000 people in the last three months of the year. It now employs 32,467 full-time workers.

If you’re looking for a positive spin on today’s numbers, Google is happy to help. Q4 revenue was up 25 percent over the past year, it notes, and 9 percent more than Q3.

Here, again, is Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney’s guide to interpreting the numbers:

Google streams its earnings call (via YouTube, of course) but in case you’d like to spend your time doing something else, I’ll be listening in and taking live notes here at 4:30 pm ET:

4:30 pm: Good afternoon. Waiting for Google execs to come online to chat about Q4. Meanwhile, Google investors are shoveling shares out the door, and the stock is lurching, down more than 9 percent.

4:31 pm: Call is starting. On the line, the now-usual lineup: Larry Page, CFO Patrick Pichette, product head Susan Wojcicki, sales boss Nikesh Arora.

4:34 pm: Larry talking about “blowing past $10 billion” in revenue. Also the fact that David Beckham engaged in a Google+ “hangout” recently.

Larry talking about last week’s Google+ search revamp, “which I’m really excited about.” “To make a real impact in the world,” we need to shutter some stuff. We’ve turned off 12 projects in the last quarter, so we can double down on things like Chrome, Android, YouTube.

Android: 250 million devices, up 50 million in last quarter. Over 11 billion downloads from Android Market. “Wow.” (That’s from the script.)

“Chrome is on fire, too.” “People thought we were crazy. Who wants another browser?” But we were right!

Display (perhaps you’ve seen our piece in The Wall Street Journal just now). Now on a $5 billion run rate. DoubleClick up 130 percent year over year.

“Very pleased” with ads on YouTube.

That display ad run rate, by the way, is up 2x from October 2010.

4:40 pm: Now CFO Pichette. He’s also very pleased with the quarter. Walking through numbers:

Pichette talking up negative effects of foreign currency moves, which the company also stresses in its pullout slides. We’ll see if investors go for that (curious if analysts feel they have decent visibility into FX for GOOG).

Skipping most of these numbers, since you can get most of it from release and also via supplementary slides.

Pichette warns that Google will keep spending a lot on capex, and that that spend will be “lumpy.”

4:45 pm: Arora to talk about sales. “Strong performance across the portfolio.”

Arora lays in a series of numbers that don’t really register with me, in part because Page and Pichette just mentioned some of them. That display ad number is still quite amazing, though we would of course love to know how that’s split up between “regular” Web ads, YouTube and mobile.

Another shout-out for David Beckham. (Who I assume is still a big international star, even though I’m pretty sure the U.S. has moved on after a brief flirtation.)

An actual “shout-out”! To international business teams.

4:51 pm: Wojcicki, who starts by explaining/defending “Search plus Your World” changes rolled out earlier this month. More personalized results: Pictures friends have taken, article mom had shared, etc. Just like Facebook, which is the point.

Sorry, lost the string here. But really, this is the part that you can always skip during the call: A number-free brochure.

4:57 pm: Q&A:
Q: Did you see a big shift in mobile use over the holiday?
A: Larry: Nikesh, you answer. Nikesh: “Mobile growing by leaps and bounds.” “So yes, we are seeing tremendous usage, and we also saw uptick during holidays,” when people were looking for stuff.

Q: So is CPC decline because more people went through mobile?
A: Nikesh: Susan, you answer that. Susan: Two biggest factors were FX and changes we’ve made, which increase paid clicks — better for everyone — but those clicks may have a lower cost.

Q: What’s in that $5B display number? Same as the $2.5B number from October 2010?
A: Pichette: Yep — take out text, count mobile, count YouTube. Apples to apples.

Q: How did Europe affect numbers? Also, can you give us a sense of “blended TAC rate” for that $5B?
A: Not talking about $5B breakout. On the economy: “Quite a solid Q4 performance.” Separate from FX issues, Europe was “quite healthy, despite the environment.”

Q: YouTube. Can you give us a little more insight there? Are you seeing signs that TV ad budgets are coming to YouTube? Where are YouTube monies coming from?

A: Pichette: “YouTube is doing absolutely terrific.” Larry on YouTube ads: “Tremendously excited about our growth … but it’s not significant compared to the overall video space.” TV advertisers not thinking about it. (Which is the point of the channel strategy.)

Missed Q on Android. Here’s Larry Page’s answer: Early stages of monetization. We do make money on it via ads, and some people are buying apps, too (most downloads are free). “I’m very, very optimistic.”

5:06 pm: Q: More on CPC being down. Question involves “rank order,” so my head hurts.
A: Pichette: Panda search changes will show up next Q. FX changes we can’t do anything about.

[Missed next exchange]

5:09 pm: Q: Another CPC question. Talk more about this, please. Also, your traffic acquisition costs are up. Why?
Pichette. TAC increase is “just a mix issue.” (Mobile mix or partner mix? “Yes,” says Pichette.)
Wojciki: Like I said, FX and changes we made to ad quality are the reason that CPC is down. This quarter, we made a lot of changes. Quarter before, we did a lot, too. Some Q3 changes show up in Q4. “But not any one big one — it was the sum of many other changes.”

Oh, Google earnings call. You are defeating my powers of concentration.

Q: Discussion of hedging program. “Is this working the way you want?” Also, CPC seems to be going the way you want, even though it costs you money. Please talk about that.
A: Pichette gives answer about hedging that is 100 percent jibberjabber to me, because I can barely master a checking account.

Larry Page on CPC: “I do think that CPCs do vary a fair amount, and we’re not surprised by that.” Some changes we make will push it up, others down. Not that big a deal.

Q: Are you happy with the results over the quarter? A: Larry: Like I said, yes.

Wojciki: Instead of focusing on CPC decline, you should note that paid clicks are up 34 percent.
Page: Can the next question not be about CPC?

Q: Nope, it’s a question about CPC.
A: Pichette: Overall, you’re seeing more clicking, and we’re getting a better overall result. If CPC goes down for some reason, “that’s just the nature of experimentation.”

Q: Google+ question for Larry. Please describe how G+ can increase engagement on all properties.
Larry: Engaging with users, really deeply; really, really important. G+ really important part of that effort. Notion of identity really important. With “other big companies that work on social data … we’ve seen a general data to wall that garden off.” We like to partner with third parties. “But in general, companies have been walling that data off,” and we’d love to use it. (Here I would like to see the facial expressions of Dick Costolo and Mark Zuckerberg.)

Q: Do you need more markets for e-commerce play? Thirty markets right now.
A: Wojciki. Yes, we’re good. We’ll expand, but we need to learn from the places we’re in right now.

Q: Last year, in Q4, you talked about big changes “on the quality side.” Talk about that. Also, you hired less people this Q than in other Qs. Trend?
A: We talked about it last year, because it was a big deal. As far as hiring, Larry already said we were growing very fast — Larry interrupts here: “The edge of what was manageable” — so now we’ve slowed.

Last Q: More on Google Wallet, please. Are you going to double down on that? Also on Motorola: Given $12.5B size, won’t that affect “growth and margin profile”? So please talk about mobile philosophy.

A: Wojcicki: Like Larry said, we’re focusing on core products that people use every day, and you use you wallet every day, so it’s a big deal for us. “Very excited about Wallet, and will continue to invest in it.”

Larry: We’ll break out Motorola so you can see the results separately from the rest of the business. We’ve been clear that we will run it as a separate business, and won’t favor it compared to other OEMS (again, so why keep it?). Shows our commitment to Android, and how we want to keep “our freedom to innovate” (Translation: We need those patents.)

Pichette: Remember, for Q1, lots of resets every year at this time. So you won’t be surprised at the end of the quarter.

Alrighty, we’re done. Thanks for sticking around.

Earlier this month, investors pushed Google shares up past $670 — the highest they’ve ever been. They’ve since pulled back a bit, but not for performance reasons: The Street still expects Google to post net revenue of around $8.4 billion — that’s up about 30 percent over the previous year — and earnings of around $10.46 a share — up about 20 percent.

If there are questions out there about Google, the Street seems to think they’re about what could happen — government regulation, a misstep with the $12.5 billion Motorola Mobility deal, etc. — than what just happened over the last three months.

Analysts who have been listening to search marketers say they don’t see any real signs of slowdown over the last quarter, even as other ad businesses have been roughed up. (We’ll ignore, for now, an outlier report from Kantar Media which reports a huge and puzzling decrease in paid search.)

As always, there is lots of interesting stuff going on at Google. And, as usual, you can expect Larry Page and company to say very little about it, other than making vague comments about the strength of their core search business, and some acknowledgement that their video, mobile and display ads are starting to become very significant businesses of their own.

In a fantasy world, we’d like to hear Page, et al, talk about what they really think about Facebook, and whether that move to shove Google+ pages into Google search results is as telling as it seems to be. We’d also like to hear more detail about their plans for Motorola, assuming the deal goes through early this year. Don’t hold your breath.

For more grounded speculation, we can consult this cheat sheet from Citi’s Mark Mahaney, which lets you see how different results might move GOOG shares. We continue to find these summaries as useful as ever (click image to enlarge):

Asa Mathat | AllThingsD.com

Stephanie Tilenius demonstrates Google Wallet at the D9 conference.

Over the past year, Tilenius has been visible for her role in Google Wallet, one of Google’s biggest bets in commerce to date.

In May, she was one of the main executives to unveil Google Wallet at an event in New York, and a week later, at our D event in California, demonstrated how easy it was to tap an Android phone at the register to check out.

In a statement, Google spokesman Nate Tyler said: “Stephanie is moving to a new role where she will oversee global strategy and work with key partners to expand our commerce efforts internationally.”

Tilenius will continue to report to Jeff Huber, SVP of Commerce & Local.

In her previous role, Tilenius was overseeing Google Checkout, which recently merged with Google Wallet so that users needed only one payment account to cover purchases across Android Market, YouTube, Google+ Games and other Google properties.

The former eBay executive also played a role in Google’s negotiations to buy Groupon, which ultimately failed. Instead, Google launched Google Offers to compete with Groupon head-on.

Presumably, Tilenius will continue to work on all of these products but in an international capacity.

Tilenius was also in the spotlight in May, on the same day as the New York Google Wallet launch, when PayPal filed suit against Google and two of its former executives – Tilenius and Osama Bedier, Google’s VP of payments and former PayPal executive. The lawsuit claimed that Google and the two employees misappropriated trade secrets and violated contracts involving recruiting agreements.

In a piece by Lesley Stahl of CBS news show “60 Minutes,” she interviewed the leader of the Chicago-based social buying company in his first national appearance since the company’s initial public offering.

Of course, Stahl asked hard-hitting questions about the fishy revenue figures and the questionable accounting practices that preceded the IPO.

And, because it is “wacky” Groupon, she also questioned the appropriateness of a CEO who has a video of himself practicing yoga in tighty whities in front of a Christmas tree on YouTube.

Mason, who was often grinning during the interview, tried hard not to come off as defensive.

“The difference between me and other CEOs is that I’ve been unwilling to change myself or shape myself around what’s expected,” said the 31-year-old founder. “Am I as experienced or as mature or smart as other CEOs. No probably not, but there’s something useful about having the founder as a CEO.”

At one point, he acknowledged it wasn’t enjoyable when the criticism was peaking and the company was in its quiet period. He likened the experience to the Wolverine’s skin being melted off.

Stahl had no idea what he was talking about.

Did he wear a tie? Nope. But he thinks he should get credit for asking the producers if it was necessary. Is that a sign the boss is growing up? Maybe.

For the record, he does own more than four.

All-in-all, Mason worked hard not to say anything too revealing.

Here’s the whole interview:

And, here’s Stahl comparing Mason to other tech CEOs she’s interviewed:

(By the way, before we get there: I didn’t watch “SNL” last night, and no one in my Twitter stream seems to have been interested, either. But the reason I’ve seen these is because I got an email this morning from “social media agency” New Media Strategies, which NBC is using to promote yesterday’s show. I believe I’ve noted this before, but we’ve come an awful long way from NBC’s befuddlement over “Lazy Sunday” showing up on YouTube. Then again, it’s been six (!) years.)

A reminder that typing and texting is dangerous/funny:

And a weird one that mocks the Internet audience that it hopes will end up watching and talking about this. “I have no shame or self-awareness”:

On Saturday, the News Corp. CEO used his new Twitter account to rail against the search giant, call it a “piracy leader,” and gripe that it had too much influence in Washington, and the White House, in particular. (Here we need to remind you that News Corp. owns this Web site.) Business Insider has all four of his “Internet makes me angry” tweets (Update: He’s back at it! More below), including the one he deleted, but here are the two relevant ones:

So Obama has thrown in his lot withSilicon Valley paymasters who threaten allsoftware creators with piracy, plain thievery. -

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) January 14, 2012

Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them.No wonder pouring millions into lobbying. — Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) January 14, 2012

That amounts to an open invitation for Web pundits to sound off, which they were happy to accept. Techmeme is studiously collecting those responses, but the one I like best so far comes from Om Malik:

.@rupertmurdoch you weren’tcomplaining much when google was paying you big ad dollars for MySpace, that hosted some “pirate” stuff #SOPA

— Om Malik (@om) January 14, 2012

The obvious point to make here is that Murdoch’s venting (which his legal and PR handlers would love to quell, but can’t) was spurred by the White House statement which deflated the SOPA and PIPA antipiracy bills today. It’s also not the first time Murdoch has sounded off about Google.

In 2009, he went on a similar anti-Google crusade, though that one was more measured and planned, and involved many of his lieutenants. But do remember that in Rupe’s world, cursing loudly at someone doesn’t mean you can’t do business with them. A year after Murdoch was threatening to boycott Google, he cut a new deal with them. I’m sure it won’t be the last.

Speaking of Murdoch’s lieutenants: We’ll have his top one, chief operating office Chase Carey, at our D: Dive Into Media conference at the end of the month. And we’ll have a high-ranking rep from Google, too: YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar. Guess we’ll have to revisit this with both of them: Grab a front-row seat.

Update: Just like a lot of fellow Twitter users, Murdoch is having a hard time disengaging. Two more here:

Understand more than all allege!Google great company doing many exciting things. Only one complaint, and it’s important.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) January 15, 2012

Just been to google search for mission impossible. Wow, several sites offering free links.I rest my case.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) January 15, 2012

Google announced the plan last fall, but yesterday, YouTube content boss Robert Kyncl held a formal coming-out party for the plan, with a presentation for a packed house at the Consumer Electronics Show. And after that, I talked to him about why YouTube had changed course.

After all, plenty of people seem to like YouTube just the way it is. It attracts 800 million users a month, who watch a staggering three billion hours of clips a day. And while Google has never come out and disclosed the site’s finances, it frequently hints that it is a big business, and perhaps a profitable one.

And if YouTube really wants to get more premium stuff for the site, why not go out and buy the stuff that Hollywood and the TV guys are already making? Google could certainly afford it, and Big Media has gotten very comfortable about putting its stuff online, as long as it’s getting a big check for it. Kyncl knows that well, since he used to arrange those deals at Netflix, before joining Google in 2010.

You can see Kyncl’s answers here — apologies for the extra-shaky cam — and below that, you can see the full CES presentation. And in a couple weeks, you can hear from Kyncl’s boss, YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar, at our D: Dive Into Media conference. Registration details here.

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• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120113/channel-changer-one-on-one-with-youtube-content-boss-robert-kyncl-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120112/soft-ad-sales-ding-hulus-2011-growth/ http://allthingsd.com/20120112/soft-ad-sales-ding-hulus-2011-growth/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:23:59 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=163413 Remember back in the fall of 2011, when we started hearing anecdotal reports about slowing ad sales? Add Hulu to the list of examples: The company just reported a 60 percent jump in overall revenue for 2011 — which isn’t as much as it had thought it was going to do a year ago.

In a blog post, CEO Jason Kilar blames the shortfall on a “soft advertising market (economy) in the second half of 2011.”

The numbers: Hulu did $420 million last year, via a combination of ad sales and revenue from its Hulu Plus subscription service. But during the first half of 2011, it had told the world — several times — that it was “on pace to approach” $500 million.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see when sales started softening. In July, when Kilar reported his company’s Q2 numbers, he was still offering the same $500 million revenue guidance. But in early October, when he reported Q3 numbers, the guidance had disappeared from his update.

There are a whole lot of people who would like to report 60 percent annual growth. And the fact that Hulu revenue missed earlier projections by 16 percent  – “overall the Hulu ad business grew aggressively and Hulu Plus materially exceeded our plan,” Kilar notes in his post — isn’t going to be the biggest issue for the service by a long shot.

Hulu’s management and its owners — Providence Equity, Comcast, Disney and News Corp. — need to reach a fundamental agreement about the video site’s direction, and how the site fits into today’s entertainment landscape. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

But it’s still worth noting the miss, because Hulu is both a digital ad business and a digital ad business that sells very premium video.

It’s an article of faith among digital ad bulls that the industry will keep growing even if the larger economy takes a hit, because ad dollars will shift from old media, anyway. And advertisers are supposed to be clamoring for the tv shows and movies that Hulu sells — which is one of the reasons Google is trying to shift upmarket from dogs on skateboards, with its “channels” strategy.

We’ll start hearing other reports on the state of last fall’s ad market, and the outlook for the future, over the next couple weeks, when public companies start reporting their Q4 numbers.

And we’ll hear a lot more from Kilar himself, who will be appearing at our D: Dive into Media conference at the end of this month. If you want to see him in person, grab a seat.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120112/soft-ad-sales-ding-hulus-2011-growth/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120108/frequency-a-tv-guide-for-web-video-tris-a-new-look/ http://allthingsd.com/20120108/frequency-a-tv-guide-for-web-video-tris-a-new-look/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 03:00:11 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=161381 You watch a lot of Web video, and you will watch a lot more. Who will serve as your TV Guide?

There are a whole lot of people who want to be in that game, and Blair Harrison is one of them. His Frequency, which launched last year, has gone through an overhaul, but its gist remains the same: It wants to let you pick and choose feeds of stuff you know you like. It wants to show you stuff your friends like, too, by incorporating cues from your social networks.

Harrison, who made his money and reputation building iFilm and selling it to Viacom during the beginning of the Web 1.0 boom, raised $3 million last year, and since then has rounded up another $1 million.

More important, his new Web site is slicker, and now features a dashboard that you can program with feeds you select, along with ones that use suggestions from Facebook, Twitter, et al. And the service now offers an iPad version, as well as one that will be featured on some Samsung TVs. Here’s what it should look like on the big screen:

Harrison’s challenges also remain the same: He needs to convince people that they should use a Web video hub, period. Facebook already does a great job of surfacing cool videos my friends think I should see (thanks for the Wilco clip, everyone), and Twitter is getting better at it.

And if I am inclined to use a Web video hub, chances are I’m already doing it via Google, at YouTube.

Google is particularly interesting for Harrison, since it’s both competition and de facto partner. YouTube is in the process of dividing itself up into niche channels that will work particularly well with Frequency’s new scheme — if you like the indie music that myISH serves up on YouTube, it should be easy to bring that feed right into Frequency.

But Google would very much like to be the program guide for Web video, too, via Google TV. That means, for instance, that some Samsung models will feature Frequency, and others will feature the one from the giant company with enormous resources. Tough fight.

Harrison isn’t asking consumers to fund his fight, either. The Web sites and apps are free, and the only ads that show up on the videos are the ones that the original distributors add in there, so right now Frequency is revenue-free.

Harrison says he needs to build scale and can figure it out later, but there are some obvious sponsorship/customization routes that he can try, just like Flipboard is trying out with magazines for its Web app reader. In fact, if you said that Harrison was trying to build Flipboard for Web video, he wouldn’t stop you.

Anyway! No point in writing about Web video without showing Web video. Here are a couple of clips Frequency tells me my friends think I would like:

Now-65-year-old David Bowie, from way back in 1973, via Facebook:

And, for whatever reason, a weather balloon, via Twitter:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120108/frequency-a-tv-guide-for-web-video-tris-a-new-look/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120103/youre-one-of-the-four-million-3ds-owners-now-how-do-you-watch-the-3-d-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120103/youre-one-of-the-four-million-3ds-owners-now-how-do-you-watch-the-3-d-video/#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:11:55 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=159188 Let’s say you’re one of the four million owners of a Nintendo 3DS. Maybe you’re an “Ambassador,” which means you bought the 3-D handheld shortly after its launch last March. Or perhaps you got sucked in by the new software titles this holiday season. Either way, you may be aware that earlier this month, Nintendo released a system update that allows 3DS users to record up to 10 minutes of glasses-free 3-D video in continuous or stop-motion style.

Well, it may be glasses-free 3-D on the 3DS screen, but it’s not going to look right on most Web sites, as pointed out by the Consumerist.

Fortunately, Nerd Mentality spent some time over the holidays making two comprehensive video tutorials on how to upload and view Nintendo 3DS video on YouTube. There’s a Quick Guide for users who might already be pretty comfortable transcoding video into different formats and sharing it online; there are also two lengthy videos for watching your 3DS video on both Windows and Mac computers.

In short, the recommended specs for 3-D video on YouTube are H.264 1920×1080 Side by Side L/R, though Nerd Mentality points out that YouTube can only display 3-D video at a maximum resolution of 720p, even if it’s uploaded at a higher resolution. YouTube does support glasses-free 3-D, but you may still want to try viewing it with glasses.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120103/youre-one-of-the-four-million-3ds-owners-now-how-do-you-watch-the-3-d-video/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20120103/googles-ad-company-which-isnt-google-explains-whats-up-with-those-chrome-ads/ http://allthingsd.com/20120103/googles-ad-company-which-isnt-google-explains-whats-up-with-those-chrome-ads/#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:11:15 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=159168 Google is paying bloggers to run posts promoting its Google Chrome browser.

Is that a big deal? Depends on whom you ask.

Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan, who sussed this out yesterday, has two big problems with the notion.

The first is that in at least one case a blogger’s post linked to Google in seeming violation of Google’s policy against so-called “paid links.” Sullivan’s bigger beef is that the content of the posts themselves consists of a video ad and some barely sensical text — the kind of thing that Google is trying to flush out of its search results by tweaking its algorithms.

So what’s going on? I’ve asked Google reps for comment, but I’m still waiting for them to get back from vacation. [UPDATE - they have, see below] But Unruly Media, the London-based company which ran the campaign for Google, was happy to answer. (Yup – Google, which dominates both Web advertising and Web video, relies on an outsider to promote its Web video ads.)

There’s nothing wrong here, says Unruly CEO Scott Button, except for what appears to be a one-off technical mistake by a single blogger. Here’s his email response:

Yes, it’s a campaign we were running at the end of December.

There’s a good response by Andrew Girdwood here.

Andrew’s absolutely right — we don’t ask bloggers to link to the advertiser’s site. It’s just not part of our business model. We help advertisers distribute video content and that’s what we get paid for. All links from the video player itself are wrapped in Javascript, so although Google can follow them, they don’t influence search engine rankings. Even though we don’t ask bloggers to link, we do advise them to use nofollow if they do link to the advertiser’s site. This is really important and they should do it to protect themselves as much as the advertiser.

As far as I’m aware, there was one link in one post that was not marked nofollow. This was corrected as soon as we became aware of it.

We’re always completely upfront and transparent with bloggers that we are running commercial campaigns and who we’re working for. We always require that bloggers disclose any commercial incentive to post video content. We always require that bloggers disclose even on related tweets that they might do off their own bats.

It’s also a key part of how we operate that we don’t tell bloggers what or how to write. It’s really important that opinions expressed and the tone of voice belong to the author not the advertiser. Occasionally that leads to human error, as here, so we’re always really happy to have these kinds of example flagged and will sort them out as quickly as we possibly can.

Note that Button doesn’t address Sullivan’s complaint that the text in the bloggers’ post is barely better than garbage. That stuff may not be elegant, but it does seem to work — Unruly says its ad network reaches 725 million people a month.

UPDATE: Google has offered a response, and it doesn’t sync with Button’s. Here’s a quote from a Google spokesperson:

“Google never agreed to anything more than online ads. We have consistently avoided paid sponsorships, including paying bloggers to promote our products, because these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users. We’re now looking at what changes we need to make to ensure that this never happens again.”

And here’s more along those lines, via Essence Digital, another Google ad vendor, this time posted on a Google+ page:

“We want to be perfectly clear here: Google never approved a sponsored-post campaign. They only agreed to buy online video ads. Google have consistently avoided paid postings to promote their products, because in their view these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users.

In this case, Google were subjected to this activity through media that encouraged bloggers to create what appeared to be paid posts, were often of poor quality and out of line with Google standards. We apologize to Google who clearly didn’t authorize this.”

All of this back-and-forth finger pointing might seem odd to the outside world, but it’s not uncommon in online ads, where money and marching orders pass through multiple points on their way from the original customer to the site that runs the ad.

Here’s the video ad, by the way. I guess I should disclose that Google is not paying me to post this:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120103/googles-ad-company-which-isnt-google-explains-whats-up-with-those-chrome-ads/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120103/viral-video-adorkableirksome-indie-actors-sing-cute/ http://allthingsd.com/20120103/viral-video-adorkableirksome-indie-actors-sing-cute/#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:57:23 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=159128

Why do I simultaneously like and am annoyed by Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt?

Perhaps it’s their twee names, perhaps their indie acting tics, perhaps their faux-childlike thing — all while being so dang cute.

Others must agree, since the video of the pair — who co-starred in the movie, “(500) Days of Summer” — singing Nancy Wilson’s “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” has gotten more than six million views on YouTube since its posting this weekend.

Here they are at full power, with a note on Deschanel’s Hello Giggles site that says she bonded with Gordon-Levitt “over a mutual appreciation for Harry Nilsson and Nina Simone.”

Hello Giggles? Ironically juxtaposing Harry Nilsson and Nina Simone? A ukulele? Could they be any more hipster?

No, they cannot, and it works once again:

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