BoomTown was intrigued when Mind-Your-Own Biz Stone, one of the co-founders of Twitter, penned a blog post yesterday about the microblogging service changing its prompting question.

Now, above the little Twitter box, it reads, “What’s Happening?” and not the original tweet query, “What are you doing?”

While the blogosphere covered this as if it were a moment of monumental meaning, most were ignorant that the true beacon of innovative What’s-Happeningness does not reside in Silicon Valley.

Read More »

AOL has hired a pair of New York investment bankers, Morgan Stanley and Allen & Co., to manage the sale of its ICQ instant-messaging unit.

Sources familiar with the situation said interest in buying the asset from two major non-U.S. companies prompted execs at the online service to put a process in place for a deal that will likely occur after AOL becomes an independent company in December.

AOL bought ICQ in 1998 for about $400 million–$287 million outright and $125 million in earnouts for the team.

Sources said AOL to looking to recoup $300 million.

Read More »

Hollywood director James Cameron is well known for his heavy use of special effects and techtastic techniques in his movies, which include “Titanic,” “Aliens” and the first–and best–two “Terminator” blockbusters.

In a few weeks, Cameron is hoping to hit geek gold again with a 3-D sci-fi juggernaut called “Avatar,” which is about an indigenous blue-colored tribe and their inevitable greedy enemies.

Thus, cue the Smurfs!

Read More »

When in San Diego recently, BoomTown paid a visit to Qualcomm and its Chairman and CEO, Paul Jacobs, to talk about a new “smartbook” device the wireless-technology company unveiled last week, but that won’t make its debut until the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in January.

There, Jacobs will show off what is essentially a combination of a smartphone and a netbook.

Obviously, it’s going to be a competitive market and, really, Apple, with its upcoming tablet computer, is also pushing into this mobile-phone-that-ate-computers space.

Read More »

If spinning is an intense political skill, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is doing her very best at trying to create a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

As Om Malik reports on GigaOm, Whitman–who is trying to nab the Republican gubernatorial nomination in California–told a radio interviewer recently that “actually I think Skype will prove to be a good acquisition for eBay.”

Well, good if you mean the $2.6 billion purchase of the Interent telephony that didn’t ever work as Whitman had effusively promised in 2005. Or the ugly lawsuits over it. Or the successful shakedown by its co-founders to get a big chunk back.

You get the idea.

Read More »

It certainly is good to see Microsoft working the innovation thing, especially in the consumer space with its Bing search service.

The ultimate goal is to gain market share for Bing, from striking deals with hotter companies like Twitter and Facebook to doing a massive advertising and marketing campaign to making constant feature upgrades.

This is one of those weeks for Bing, with the launch of a spate of new features that show a lot of chutzpah.

But whether all this will spell significant changes in market share compared to dominant rival Google is still an open question.

Read More »

Who said the venture capital industry is sucking wind lately?

Well, it is–but not today and, especially, not Accel Partners, which sold two of its portfolio start-ups to large public companies for a total of $1.5 billion.

That would be the sale of AdMob to search behemoth Google for $750 million in stock, and the acquisition of Playfish by gaming giant Electronic Arts for about $300 million.

While Accel is not getting all that dough, it’s not a bad haul for the day.

Read More »

Google has a Web page up about today’s acquisition of AdMob for $750 million in stock, which includes this lovely image of the differences between what the Silicon Valley companies do in the mobile advertising space.

Here’s the quick translation: The Web search behemoth has been slower than molasses in the space, sticking with boring blue links of death, especially compared to the innovative and nimbler start-up, which is rocking the pretty ads.

So, we ate it.

Read More »

Google has acquired AdMob for $750 million, a huge price for an innovative start-up that hass pioneered online ads on mobile and now smart phones.

BoomTown visited AdMob last fall and posted about how it was likely to eventually be acquired by…Google!

The move is a major one for the search giant, which has been pushing hard into the mobile advertising space as it seeks to grow its already considerable Web business. AdMob is arguably the fastest out of the gate in the nascent arena.

Plus, here’s AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui in a video interview with me last November, as well as the official press release on the sale.

Read More »

Today, All Things Digital debuts a new feature called “Almost Famous” in our Voices section.

No, it is not about Kate Hudson and nascent rock stars.

Well, you might meet geek rock stars to be.

Focused on innovative, interesting or just plain odd start-ups, we thought it was a good way for our readers to get a gander at some up-and-coming ideas and trends. It will be penned by Drake Martinet every Friday.

Read More »

Tony Conrad, CEO and co-founder of Sphere–the contextually relevant content engine AOL bought in the spring of 2008 for upward of $25 million–left the Time Warner online unit last month, several sources have told BoomTown in recent weeks.

But, in an effort by AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong to hold onto entrepreneurial talent, Conrad has agreed to become “Special Advisor” to its AOL Ventures Unit.

Apparently, he is also mulling a new start-up and remains a VC too.

Read More »

The new MSN homepage debuts tonight and you would be completely correct in thinking the recipe Microsoft has cooked up to inform its design ethos–white, clean and hiply modern–has definite echoes of a certain longtime tech rival.

That would be Apple, of course, with a big dollop of Twitter and Facebook tossed in, and finished off with a generous sprinkling of Microsoft’s new Bing search service.

For those who care: The MSN butterfly logo remains, although it appears to have lost a lot of weight.

Read More »

Here is a video interview BoomTown did with Bob Visse, GM of MSN Product Management today at Microsoft’s offices in San Francisco.

The new MSN homepage debuts tonight with a redesign cutting clutter, adding the ability to access both Facebook and Twitter, a local focus and with Microsoft’s new Bing search service everywhere.

Also, some Microsoft interviews with MSN staff about the changes.

Read More »

Now, BoomTown likes a good jingle as much as anyone else, but this new one from Microsoft’s Bing search service is sticking in my head like a piece of chewed gum.

Shot at Keith Valley Middle School in Horsham, Pa., it uses 400 very adorable sixth graders, who are dragooned into one very large “Bing Goes the Internet” dance–complete with logo wear. The kids rock, the jingle not so much.

Read More »

Yesterday, BoomTown moderated a panel at California’s Women’s Conference titled “Changing the World Through the Web” for a crowd of several thousand people.

The panelists included Hollywood actor/producer, Katalyst co-founder and Twitter demigod Ashton Kutcher; Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg, who leads the social networking site’s elections, breaking news and social change initiatives; Premal Shah, president of online microloan site Kiva.org; and Joe Rospars, founder and creative director of Blue State Digital and new media director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Here are video interviews I did with each of them.

Read More »