Dinner and Chatting with Rupe (aka BoomTown’s New Boss)
by Kara Swisher
Posted on October 18, 2007 at 9:57 AM PT
Did I wangle a seat right next to soon-to-be Dow Jones owner Rupert Murdoch last night at the Web 2.0 Summit dinner?
Of course I did, continuing in the shameless BoomTown tradition of trying to get gratis meals with moguls (like our ongoing efforts to raise money for DonorsChoose.org and get a free lunch with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang).
(Here’s a picture above that I nicked from Valleywag, as they called me “abrasive” in their post and said I was carrying water for News Corp.-owned MySpace with my incessant questions about rival Facebook’s business model and insane valuation. To the first, I say that’s like a commercial sander calling Comet abrasive and, to the second, I obviously now have to start slapping MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe’s handsome face around to maintain my scratchy cred.)
In any case, the News Corp. chairman and CEO could Web 2.0 it up with the rest of the geeks, as it turned out, and managed to touch on topics ranging from the Facebook valuation to the state of the media industry to the need for even more digitization across the landscape.
If you want to see Murdoch in action, here’s some snippets of his onstage interview, along with MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe with conference co-host John Battelle. It’s a little hard to hear, but worth the watch.
He talks about such topics as his love of Silicon Valley, the future of MySpace (owned by News Corp.), the renewal of DeWolfe’s contract, Google, Facebook, his hope for the New York Times (Would he like to kill it? “That’d be nice,” he answered.), the “half-dead” CNBC (the main competitor of his new Fox Business channel) and, of course, his plans for his newest shiny toy, The Wall Street Journal (more culture!).
I asked him, no surprise, about the $15 billion Facebook valuation, which prompted Murdoch to say News Corp. was drastically undervalued. That’s cheeky!
Thanks also to the other Web 2.0 Co-Host Tim O’Reilly for asking Murdoch when he was going to fire BoomTown! Job security? Nope! Rupe’s answer: “There’s still time!” (Hopefully, after he shivs the Times and CNBC.)
Here the video:
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Comments
Kara,
Posted by Paul Bendat at October 18th, 2007 at 3:51 pmYour access to the most interesting people is fantastic and keeps me coming back.
It would be great if you could raise the production standard a little. While I appreciate the charm, you should be able to do better than a hand held camera from the head table. Ultimately it distracts from the substance of why we want to listen to you.
And ask some difficult questions!
Cheers,
Paul
Speaking of production values, it’d be nice if Rupert raised some of the production values of Fox News and Fox Business. He has awesome resources, but he needs to clean it up, a little. But, then, I’m a stickler for clean design and production. High value, that’s what I’m looking for.
rod
Posted by rod sandcones at October 18th, 2007 at 5:17 pmPaul! I did ask a good question in the comments part of the night, which neither Rupe or Chris answered, about what they were going to do about Facebook with a big bag of cash.
Re: video! Sorry! I will consider an upgrade, but I kind of like the rawness!
Posted by Kara Swisher at October 18th, 2007 at 11:01 pmkara — love the videos. One problem of late is that they often don’t play all the way through. So you’re watching, watching, watching — then it just resolves as if its done. If you try and watch again it’ll do this again but at a slightly different point in the stream.
Posted by Jeff Birkeland at October 19th, 2007 at 8:50 am