All Things Digital

In BoomTown’s bold quest to annoyingly stick a Flip digital video camera in the face of every Yahoo senior exec, this week I worked the last nerve of its CTO and EVP of Products, Aristotle “Ari” Balogh.

Actually, the 45-year-old Balogh is a very calm and pleasant man, especially considering the huge responsibility that has been foisted on him by CEO Carol Bartz to rejigger how Yahoo makes its products and services and deploy its technology in a more efficient, centralized and, most of all, innovative manner.

To explain all this, Balogh sat down with me twice–he is clearly a glutton for punishment–to talk about where Yahoo stood as it sought to dig itself out of its long slump and reemerge as the potent Internet force it once was.

Read More »

Over the last weeks, News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller and MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta have had their hands full directing massive layoffs at the flagship social-networking site, as well as throughout the Fox Interactive Media division.

The pair discussed the many challenges faced by the giant media company in its digital enterprises in an onstage interview at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference last month.

Read More »

BoomTown is at the lovely Santa Clara Marriott in Silicon Valley at the 2009 Yahoo annual meeting, liveblogging the event, which should be spectacularly dull.

Here is a rundown of what went on.

10:05 am: The meeting kicks off with a little video presentation with various and sundry television talking heads saying “Yahoo” in quick succession.

Actually, this was the year during which all of those hype-magnets repeated “Twitter” so many times that it has began to make my ears bleed.

But I like the spirit of trying to make Yahoo seem relevant and innovative again.

Read More »

How much is BoomTown and everyone else in Silicon Valley trying to nab a copy of Ben Mezrich’s likely-to-be-entirely-made-up-but-who-cares tale of dirty doings at Facebook?

Muchety-much! But, so far I have come up peanuts in grabbing an early copy of the work of “fact”-ion–titled “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal”–which is set to come out July 14, along with a movie later.

Facebook is not pleased, of course, and will likely be challenging Mezrich’s work as specious dreck, but here’s my own list of 10 completely made-up, utterly fabricated, just-call-me-Jayson-Blair facts that should be in the book.

Read More »

Mike Angus, EVP and General Counsel of Fox Interactive Media, is leaving that job for another in New Corp., as new digital head Jon Miller continues to reshape the division.

Last week, BoomTown reported that FIM CFO Ed McKenna was leaving his post and the company, part of many changes taking place related to News Corp.’s digital properties.

It’s all part of a major rejiggering of the News Corp. digital unit, which came into being almost four years ago, although not an elimination of the unit, as has been reported.

More likely, it will likely include a name change–perhaps to the Digital Media Group–as well as a much streamlined organization that gives more autonomy to FIM’s Web, online advertising and publishing technology units.

Read More »

Here is the latest video from the fine folks at JibJab Media, whose online political satires were among the first viral ones on the Web.

Titled “He’s Barack Obama,” it premiered tonight in front of the President at the 65th Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C.

The two-minute Obama video is being launched in conjunction with JibJab’s Facebook Connect integration, so all comments on the video will run through Facebook’s platform.

Read More »

Here’s a very funny video, called “Digital Media Musical Chairs,” from a Wall Street type who goes by the code name L. McDuff.

It’s about the many switcheroos in recent years among the execs at the big Web outfits like Google, Time Warner unit AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft .

And when you look at it from a “Hollywood Squares” point of view, it’s kind of is amazing to realize that there are only about a dozen Internet execs moving in and out of the various jobs.

Read More »

Now what?

The party-all-night social-networking site that has been MySpace so far got a massive morning-after shock yesterday when 30 percent of its workforce was laid off.

And today, MySpace, which is still 1,000-strong, has to face the cold, harsh light of day in the aftermath of the restructuring and get busy quickly figuring out a way to reinvigorate a brand that has suffered after a stunning rocket of a start many years ago.

So, based on many sources I have spoken to over the last week, here’s a rundown of the next steps MySpace will likely be taking and who’ll be making them.

Read More »

In what is quite possibly the most spot-on comment about Twitter that BoomTown has heard thus far, Harvard University Professor Jonathan Zittrain said about its use by Iranians protesting the election results there:

“It is easy for Twitter feeds to be echoed everywhere else in the world. The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what make it so powerful.”

In other words, Twitter is so simplistic and silly that it is a perfect digital tool to overthrow a government–which kind of makes the trendy microblogging service the Forrest Gump of international relations.

Read More »

Last week, in anticipation of Facebook’s Press Open House tonight for its spanking new HQ in Palo Alto, Calif., BoomTown hightailed it down there for an early look-see at what the social-networking site is doing with all that dough it collected from Microsoft and the Russians.

Moving into a new crib, for one thing!

I got an extra-special tour of the new 150,000-square-foot building, which brings more than 900 employees together at last, by Facebook’s long-suffering–mostly due to my being annoying, I know!–PR honcho, Brandee Barker.

So, much like the tour I did recently with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone of its San Francisco HQ, here is a video of Facebook’s new digs.

Read More »

Even in the midst of a tough investing environment, Silicon Valley legend and serial entrepreneur Marc Andreessen and his longtime investing partner, Ben Horowitz, have completed the raising of his new venture fund, according to the numerous sources close to the situation, and it is oversubscribed.

Sources said the fund–which was nicknamed “Project A,” but is actually called Andreessen Horowitz–will be $300 million. It is $50 million over the $250 million he and Horowitz had planned.

Read More »

Exactly how is the introduction of vanity URLs on Facebook going to go?

At 9:01 p.m. PDT on Friday, the giant Silicon Valley-based social-networking site will allow its 200 million members to log in and claim a friendlier username for part of their URLs instead of the long string of gibberish that is now there.

But, because it is about people’s names and because it is certain to be chaotic in its execution, I think we can pretty much slap the moniker “URLgate” on this one and just call it a night.

Read More »

As promised, we kick off posting the full sessions of the seventh D: All Things Digital conference with the interview that Walt Mossberg and I did onstage with two of the three founders of the hot microblogging service Twitter, Biz Stone and Evan Williams.

Our selection of the pair as the first interview was due to the enormous attention and, yes, hype, the San Francisco-based start-up has received of late. Along with a massive funding and a frothy valuation, Twitter has also attracted the acquisition attention of Web giants like Google and Microsoft.

And there is no question–thanks be to Oprah!–they’ve become the latest It boys of Silicon Valley.

Read More »

A lot of entertainers have been using the Web increasingly to promote upcoming material, so it comes as no surprise that the Jonas Brothers have turned there aggressively to do a countdown for their latest music release.

The new album, which is inexplicably called “Lines, Vines and Trying Times,” is set to debut next week.

Thus, the pop trio have been doing a lot of online promotions, such a live Facebook Webcast on their fan page today.

Unfortunately, the digital hawking also include a very odd YouTube video, which is due to some fan request that has landed Joe Jonas in spike heels and a leotard, doing a bizarre dance interpretation of Beyoncé’s viral music video, “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It).”

Read More »

San Jose Mercury News columnist Chris O’Brien made a lot of humorous hay at the expense of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz yesterday, in a joke piece called: “Bartz Unveils New &*%! Strategy for Yahoo.”

O’Brien cleverly created a fictional transcript of a Yahoo staff meeting where Bartz–by now, well-known for her salty language–lets loose in an address about just how sick she was of competitors getting all the good press: “So we’re re-branding the company around excessive use of profanity. Our new marketing slogan will be, ‘Yahoo, (expletive) yeah!’”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Read More »