All Things Digital

We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety over the next weeks in this column.

Here’s Part 4 of 4 of an interview Walt Mossberg did with the Gates Foundation’s Melinda Gates.

(I posted one video part of the discussion with Melinda Gates every day this week, starting Monday and concluding today.)

As you will see, Melinda Gates is articulate in ways that are critical to the task that she and her husband–that would be Microsoft (MSFT) Founder Bill Gates–have put before themselves: Big league philanthropy with deeply effective results, specifically in health and learning.

In this video, Melinda Gates answers questions from the audience about the time frame for the foundation, models of philanthropy, how businesses can become more philanthropic, how to improve troubled schools by eliminating “facelessness,” entrepreneurs and how to get better teachers.

In a move BoomTown is still trying to noodle over, longtime Facebook exec Matt Cohler (pictured here) will be leaving the social networking site to become a general partner at Benchmark Capital.

Cohler, who is currently Facebook’s VP of Product Management, was one of its earliest hires and, as I wrote once, seemed like “the Yoda figure at Facebook to me.”

He will not leave the prominent social-networking company until the fall, even though Cohler is already featured on the venture capital firm’s Web site.

And, after he goes, Cohler will remain as a “special adviser”–is that like a special guest star on a television show a la Heather Locklear?–to Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and senior management.

It is a great get for Benchmark to grab Cohler, of course, who will be its youngest partner ever.

And while the venture firm was the hot shop in the Web 1.0 era, it has not been as prominent a partner in the Web 2.0 space, although Benchmark does have investments in sites like Yelp and Zillow.

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Of the amazingly Internet-experience-free board that billionaire investor Carl Icahn has proposed to replace Yahoo’s current directors in this proxy fight, there is one name who does have a lot of Web-related experience, especially with regards to Yahoo (YHOO).

Specifically, in how to make bank from Yahoo’s desperation.

That would be entrepreneur and all-around bon vivant Mark Cuban (he is pictured here at our first D: All Things Digital conference in 2003), who sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo in the heady days of 1999 for $5.7 billion in Yahoo stock.

It was a huge deal at the time, with Yahoo engaged in an arms war with other Internet companies like Excite (remember them?), AOL (TWX) and others.

In an acquisitions frenzy, it grabbed Broadcast.com, which was started in 1992 as AudioNet, with Cuban and others in charge.

Broadcast.com was one of the nascent efforts to broadcast online, focusing on radio-like content on the Web, largely using sports and other live events.

It had one of those typical Web 1.0 faux-blockbuster IPOs in 1998 and then, as the stock began to decline, sold quickly to Yahoo a year later.

Right before, as it turned out, the whole bubble burst.

But Cuban and his cohorts made their scratch and were soon gone from Yahoo.

Cuban, sensing the end was nigh, also dumped his Yahoo shares before the decline. And, armed with a fortune, he began his fun foray into a range of businesses, from sports teams to movie theaters to his HDNet, a high-definition cable network.

And, of course, the private jets and entertaining courtside antics and working at the Dairy Queen!

And, also of course, most of Broadcast.com’s assets are useless to Yahoo today.

Now, Cuban is back knocking at Yahoo’s door as an invader, the only major Internet figure apparently willing to turn on the iconic Yahoo CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang.

Calling Benedict Arnold!

Read more »

Valleywag got a hold of a sticker (see below) that Bebo employees are passing around in anticipation of the close of the purchase of the third-ranked social-networking site by AOL for $850 million in cash.

The motto: “I, for one, welcome our new AOL overlords.”

Why shouldn’t they? As BoomTown reported, every Bebo employee has had their previously granted stock options accelerated and fully vested under terms of the deal.

This is typical in acquisitions by the Time Warner (TWX) online subsidiary, since it cannot offer enough of its moribund old media stock.

Unfortunately, those kind of deal terms don’t make for the kind of environment that encourages already jumpy entrepreneurs to stay. In fact, it kind of gives them a free pass to leave.

Still, it is nice to see Bebo minions celebrating their new bosses, including AOL CEO Randy Falco and President Ron Grant, who helmed the Bebo deal.

But to clarify for Bebo staff: Falco and Grant’s nickname at AOL is Smithers and Burns, that lovable pair from “The Simpsons,” and not overlords.

It goes without saying that further errors like this will not be tolerated.

For those who might not know, longtime Internet and tech figure Steve Kirsch (pictured here) wrote a blog a few weeks ago about a recent and tragic diagnosis for him: incurable blood cancer. This is terrible news, especially given that he and his wife have three young daughters.

Kirsch wrote in a post on his Web site on Aug. 11:

On Aug. 10, I inquired as to the result of the bone marrow biopsy test and they faxed me all my test results. The biopsy confirmed Coutre’s diagnosis with a 10% involvement of lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma. In other words, I’m going to die soon. Today, [Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia] is basically an incurable death sentence. According to the medical literature, which is somewhat dated, half the people die within five or six years from first diagnosis. 80% are dead within 10 years. It is very serious stuff.”

I covered Kirsch closely for a long time during the last dot-com boom, when he founded the Infoseek Web portal, which was sold to Disney. The always colorful tech entrepreneur and inventor had a strong personality and opinions that never failed to be interesting. I have not been in touch for a while, as Kirsch has been actively involved in climate-change issues.

He has another focus now:

Statistically, it is possible that I’ll be unable to see my youngest daughter graduate from high school. It’s possible that I won’t even be around even to see her graduate from elementary school. This is a great disappointment for me. But what really hits home for me is thinking that my youngest daughter may not have a dad who is around long enough to see her graduate from elementary school and that my second youngest daughter will have a father who might be dead before her high school graduation. And that I will be leaving my wonderful wife Michele with a family of three kids to raise solo. All those wonderful plans we had about how we were going to spend the rest of our lives together…those plans have…well, shall we say…changed.”

(Update: Another figure from that time, former Netscape exec Mike Homer, also still struggles to battle his severe illness, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which I posted on here.)