Huffington Post co-founder and blogging diva Arianna Huffington was in Berkeley this past weekend keynoting at the Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp 2009.
So, BoomTown took the opportunity to motor over the Bay Bridge to catch Huffington on video between sessions about all the big changes at the news Web site of late, including a new CEO and local New York site.
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.
Almost-First Daughter Meghan McCain gave the Republican Party the analog equivalent of an unhappy emoticon yesterday in a column in The Daily Beast, predicting the political party will lose power quicker than a faulty iPhone if it does not get more Web-savvy pronto.
BoomTown always liked GOP Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s sassy spawn, who had a pretty good blog during the campaign and was always coming out with some little nugget that I am sure made her PR handlers cringe.
Well, there she goes again!
The Huffington Post, co-founded by Arianna Huffington, will announce this morning that it has raised $25 million, in a single investment from Oak Investment Partners.
The large round, which was led by Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capitalist Fred Harman, will give the popular online news and blogging site a valuation of “just south of $100 million,” a source said.
The new funding, the Huffington Post’s third, will be used for expansion of its offerings and the hiring of editorial and business talent.
“I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site,” said Harman in an interview with BoomTown last night.
While you might have seen it everywhere by now, BoomTown promised this would actually be the last post of the multitude of video spoofs about Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that have popped up on the Web of late.
Thus, here is Tina Fey’s version–which, as I expected, is the best–of Palin on “Saturday Night Live” this past weekend. She is joined by Amy Poehler, who does a perfect slow-burn impression of New York Senator Hillary Clinton.
It will doubtless be the most popular video online this week.
Today, BoomTown boards the Acela Express from New York’s Penn Station to D.C.’s Union Station to attend the Senate hearing on the Yahoo agreement with Google to outsource some of its ad search business.
Titled rather ominously, “The Google-Yahoo Agreement and the Future of Internet Advertising,” the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights (eek!) will hear testimony at 10:30 a.m. at the Dirksen Senate Office Building from a passel of Internet reps, including those from Yahoo, Microsoft and Google.
Sorry for the delay, but we’ll finally start posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May in their entirety.
Kicking off the proceedings will be what most of the attendees at the conference told us they considered their favorite interview, which Walt Mossberg and I did with News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch.
Here’s Part 4 of 6 of the Murdoch interview.
Sorry for the delay, but we’ll finally start posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May in their entirety.
Kicking off the proceedings will be what most of the attendees at the conference told us they considered their favorite interview, which Walt Mossberg and I did with News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch.
Here’s Part 1 of 6 of the Murdoch interview.
So, as is BoomTown’s patriotic duty, I was watching the returns come in from Pennsylvania in the draggy war that has become the quest for the Democratic presidential candidate nomination between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as I also pondered what would happen next in the even draggier Microsoft (MSFT)-Yahoo (YHOO) takeover battle.
Then a [...]
Here’s the latest “Obama Girl” video from the folks at Barely Political, in which our-lady-of-obsession takes aim at Sen. Barack Obama’s Democratic presidential candidate rival Sen. Hillary Clinton.
In it, she urges Clinton to stop being so mean to Obama and also to step down from the race in a kind of tsk-tsk style. There is some awkward digital hugging.
As you can see from this video, BoomTown should stick to poking at Yahoo’s business plans, rather than talking to its very sharp Sarah Lacy of Yahoo Finance’s new Tech Ticker site.
Some material from AllThingsD appears on Tech Ticker from time to time, linking back to our site. And BoomTown was invited to talk about [...]
Why I do I love the Internet? Because one online video can encapsulate and send up all the political noise instantly, that’s why.
So as you vote (and whoever you prefer, most definitely get out and vote), try to remember that it is all about ch-ch-ch-ch-changes:
Until the writers’ strike in Hollywood is over–who knew it would go on this long?–BoomTown has decided to offer suggestions about stuff to watch.
Sure, James Kotecki is no Jon Stewart and is a bit goofy in an endearing preppy style as announcer.
But his short video recaps of politics with a touch of sweet snark for [...]
How far ahead of the political curve is our D: All Things Digital conference?
So far that we put all those bendy-straws-in-the-wind television pundits to shame!
Case in point: At D4, we invited former Vice President Al Gore to come just before everyone decided he was the best thing since organic whole-wheat sliced bread.
And [...]
The influence of the blogosphere and online sites in politics, which was writ large in the last presidential election, will come as no surprise in the upcoming one.
Today, The Wall Street Journal’s Amy Schatz looks at the impact of bloggers for a site called Blue Hampshire.
The influential site in the New Hampshire primary only [...]
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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