The Week to Come: Lots of Money Stuff and Rupe Visits the Geeks!
by Kara Swisher
Posted on October 12, 2007 at 5:01 AM PT
For those making plans for next week on this lovely Friday, here’s a few things to look forward to in BoomTown, including a visit to San Francisco by our new Big Boss Rupert Murdoch of News Corp.
(And should we take it personally that he still hasn’t called to ask to inspect AllThingsD HQ–also known as the ramshackle cottage behind my house–when he is here?):
1. YAHOO EARNINGS! Of course, we’re going to obsessively cover the Yahoo earnings call on Tuesday and also begin our 10-day countdown of the end of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s 100-Day No-Sacred-Cow Vision Quest.
Let’s hope it’s unsurprising financial news or a lot of fatted calves are in big trouble over at the Internet giant.
Besides news of earnings, many are looking for a more significant move from Yahoo at the end of the top-to-bottom look Yang has been taking at the company. Right now, there are rumors flying through Yahoo about another reorganization of the management ranks, especially after both Yang and President Sue Decker told the crowd of 300 vice presidents they gathered recently that such change would be constant at the company.
In addition to Yahoo, IBM and Intel will report Tuesday; eBay and Apple on Wednesday; and Google on Thursday. And Amazon, Apple and Microsoft will report the following week.
2. FACEBOOK FUNDING: Expect a possible end to the ridiculously inflated funding discussions at the hot social network, when Mark Zuckerberg makes his choice in Silicon Valley’s equivalent of the dating game.
Reportedly, there are terms sheets with a variety of proposals in Facebook’s hot little hands from all three.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will doubtlessly be making an appearance at Facebook next week, when he is scheduled to be here (see below), to convince the execs at Facebook that his tough-love approach is actually appealing and not simply like being lectured to by angry dad.
As usual, Google will be playing the coy and hip and a bit wacky rake and will be talking up solar and recycling. That’s just the kind of we’re-more-evolved-sweet talk that turned the heads of those YouTube guys. (But–let’s be honest–it makes BoomTown sometimes imagine revving up the Hummer and plowing it through all those no-carbon-footprint bicycles scattered around the Googleplex.)
And Yahoo’s Yang? He might just have to resort to outright begging, which has always worked for us.
3. WEB 2.0 SUMMIT: The San Francisco-based conference is on Wednesday until Friday with a spate of Web luminaries on stage (Ballmer, eBay’s Meg Whitman, VC Mike Moritz and more), as well as Murdoch (pictured, right).
He’ll appear with MySpace Co-Founder Chris DeWolfe on Wednesday night. And the not-Facebook social network is also throwing a party in honor of Beverly Hills-based MySpace’s new San Francisco satellite office (in what can only be seen as a capitulation to self-centered Silicon Valley geeks for whom nothing exists outside the Bay Area).
Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.
Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated the day Apple will report its quarterly results. The company will do so Oct. 22. (See comment.)
Comments
According to:
http://www.apple.com/investor/
Apple announces the following week, Monday, Oct 22nd, not this coming Wednesday at Oct 17th.
Posted by John Lin at October 13th, 2007 at 11:50 am