BoomTown » social networking

Asana Gets $9 Million (No, It's Not a Yoga Stance–It's a Workplace Productivity Start-Up From Former Facebookers)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:00:07 +0000

Yet another goofy Silicon Valley name did not prevent Asana–the workplace productivity software start-up founded by former Facebookers Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein–from nabbing $9 million in funding from Benchmark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.

The round, which was announced today, will be used to turbocharge Asana and its small team, who are aiming at the very dull and unexciting but very large and problematic workplace collaboration and communications software market.

In Sanskrit, “asana” means “sitting down” and refers to strong but relaxed postures in yoga–so presumably, Moskovitz and Rosenstein are trying to help frustrated workers achieve a digital form of nirvana.

Former Facebooker Matt Cohler, now at Benchmark, will have a seat on the Asana board. Asana had previously raised just over $1 million in an angel round, which included a spate of Silicon Valley bigwigs.

In an interview today, Rosenstein said that solving the “friction of communications” in the workplace by innovating via “information transparency” was Asana’s goal.

But, said Rosenstein, “We are not taking existing tools and porting it over the to Web…but rethinking how people can productively work together.”

He added: “We want to change the way you manage information and how you keep everyone on the same page…there are tons of misses here everyday in the workplace and it is death by 1,000 cuts.”

Moskovitz said he was always trying to solve such issues at Facebook, the social networking site he co-founded and where he once was CTO.

Ticking off a variety of workplace collaboration tools he employed, including some newer Web-based ones such as Yammer, Moskovitz said, “We could not find any easy solution, because there is not any one that answers all your issues.”

The pair said they had working product that was being used internally at the company, but would not say when one would be released publicly.

Finding one would obviously be a magic bullet, said Benchmark’s Cohler.

“This is a really big existing problem that no one has solved,” he said.

Here’s the press release:

Asana Announces $9 Million in Funding from Benchmark Capital and Andreessen-Horowitz

11/24/2009

The challenge of groups of people working together effectively is fundamental to human endeavor, but the state of the art falls far short of real efficiency. Despite advances like email and wikis, the friction and overhead of communication remain acutely painful to organizations large and small. Group leaders spend an enormous portion of their time trying to keep everyone on the same page, and knowledge workers struggle daily with inadequate, disparate tools to wrangle the information they need to do their jobs.

The technical hurdles to building the right system to address these problems are immense, and the design challenges subtle and complex. The Asana team has thought deeply about these problems for many years, in leadership roles at some of the world’s best software companies. We are undertaking an ambitious project to tackle them with a vision that reimagines the way people manage information, to speed up knowledge work and communication by an order of magnitude. This is not another enterprise application suite, nor is it an ajaxification of existing desktop software concepts; it is a new kind of software product, built for the Web from the ground up, with a focus on speed, collaboration, and ease of use.

To help us build the company, we’re bringing in Benchmark Capital and Andreessen-Horowitz. The partners at these firms bring a tremendous amount of experience building companies and helping entrepreneurs reach their goals. Benchmark is leading the $9 million round of funding, and Matt Cohler, with whom we already have a close, trusting relationship, will have a seat on the board. Andreessen-Horowitz is the only other VC firm participating, and we’ve already started enjoying the benefits of Marc’s and Ben’s great wisdom.

We plan to use the funding most immediately for growing our team. We’re currently mobilizing a group of world-class peers, and looking for passionate engineers and UI designers to join us. We need people to help us tackle some of the hardest software engineering and computer science problems, including developing a ground-breaking programming system that decimates the time required to build a web application end-to-end.

“When you look at the sheer talent, vision and ability to execute that Dustin and Justin demonstrated at Facebook and Google, you know something big can happen here. In addition to being two of the world’s best engineers in their own right, they have an extraordinary ability to rally teams around a vision like very few people can, and they are putting together a world-class team of people at Asana. This is a company with limitless potential.” –Matt Cohler, general partner, Benchmark Capital

Google Search Stories–Including Batman!–Or Are They Anti-Bing Commercials in Disguise?

Kara Swisher — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:41:49 +0000

It’s well known that Google doesn’t do much in the way of marketing around its search service.

While you will catch advertising for the Chrome browser or for Android smartphones on the Web, given Google’s huge 70 percent market share in search, it hardly needs to attract users.

So, then, what is one to make of a series of new videos, which look suspiciously like commercials, that Google (GOOG) launched late last week on its blog and posted on a new channel on YouTube?

Called “Search Stories,” there are a half-dozen of the short videos, some more adorkable than others, which star the main search box.

One thing they have in common is that they have the look and feel of a marketing campaign, with the tag line “Search on.”

They also stress a variety of Google products, such as mapping, video, price comparisons, email and more.

One imagines what pre-Batman Bruce Wayne would look for, complete with ominous music, including search terms such as “coping with loss,” “flexible kevlar” and “gotham city crime statistics.”

Another video, called “Newbie,” has a grandmother searching on “keeping in touch with grandkids” and–in a clever dig at the MySpace and Facebook social networking services–“what is myfacebook,” which gets corrected by Google to “what is facebook.”

Could it be that the $100 million marketing push Microsoft (MSFT) launched for its Bing search service, which seems to be slowly gaining share, is starting to get on the nerves of those Spocks in Silicon Valley?

Not that Google would admit this, instead simply saying it was feeling all warm and fuzzy and so decided to make some kids-let’s-put-on-a-show videos.

Wrote Robert Wong of Google Creative Lab in a blog post, in part:

Because while we’re proud of the innovations we’re making in search, we’re proudest of the things people use search to accomplish. In other words, the best search results don’t show up on a webpage–they show up in somebody’s life.

So in that spirit, we made a bunch of videos. There’s one about grandma dipping her toe into technology. One about friends taking a Kerouac inspired road trip. And yes, there’s even one about Bruce Wayne.

Judge for yourself–here they all are:

Parisian Love

Mad to Live

Batman

Newbie

Potholes

High School

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Exclusive: AOL Hires Bankers to Sell Off ICQ, as Internet Service Starts to Shed Non-Core Assets

Kara Swisher — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:18:39 +0000

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 is set to spin itself off in less than a month from corporate owner Time Warner (TWX), and sources said selling off peripheral properties likes ICQ is part of becoming a smaller, more focused company.

Sources added that AOL now wants about $300 million for the property.

ICQ, which was once of the most explosive online communications tools, has lagged since AOL bought its popular software for $287 million in 1998, with another $125 million in earnouts for the team then. It was part of an Tel Aviv, Israel, start-up called Mirabilis.

While ICQ has about 40 million to 50 million unique monthly visitors and is the No. 1 messaging service in Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Israel and other small countries, its has less traction in the U.S. than bigger rival services from Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG). In addition, Facebook and Twitter have also become major players in the status-update space.

AOL’s AIM service, in contrast, is quite strong, typically clocking as one of the top instant-messaging properties.

Said one source about the sale of ICQ, which is still based in Israel with about 100 employees and is moderately profitable: “AOL now has to be asking the hard questions.”

Those hard questions include massive layoffs, which BoomTown reported last week will take place soon. AOL then formally acknowledged the cuts, noting in a regulatory filing that Time Warner would take a $200 million charge for them.

Other AOL properties are also likely to be getting the once-over for sale, including its Bebo social networking site, which AOL bought for $850 million in 2008. But that is not imminent.

Kara Visits Facebook's Washington, D.C., Office and Talks Policy!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:02:13 +0000

Yesterday, BoomTown paid a visit to the Washington, D.C., office of Facebook to meet its reps in the nation’s capital.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the social networking site has a very small staff–just a trio of on-the-young-side dudes–battening down the hatches from a funky office in a funky section of D.C., Dupont Circle, far from the tonier and lobbyist-rich K Street corridor.

In contrast, both Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG) have a massive D.C. presence, trying to influence policy.

Still, as many in government know–such as Sarah Palin this week–Facebook has become a key tool in the basic bag of political tricks, used for organizing, canvassing, communicating and, every now and then, inspiring.

But there is also a raft of thorny legislative issues for Facebook, especially related to privacy, an arena where the company has repeatedly shot itself in the foot (Beacon! TOS!).

The company’s relatively new D.C. staff will presumably be a little smoother going forward.

They include:

Director of Public Policy Tim Sparapani, most recently with the American Civil Liberties Union, who joined in the spring.

Adam Conner, who opened Facebook’s D.C. office and who worked for some pols when he was still a college student, showing them how to use social media.

And, most recently, joining as manager of public policy communications, Andrew Noyes, a former reporter for the National Journal (and the man in 17D who pinged me on a Virgin America flight last week to meet him and the other Facebook policy wonks).

Here’s a video of the interview, in which we discuss all the big issues, from privacy to data retention to how Washington’s view of tech still has not evolved much:

[ See post to watch video ]

Flying the Digitally Friendly Skies: Gogo, Google and the Facebook PR Guy in 17D

Kara Swisher — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:11:20 +0000

So, BoomTown–who cannot be unplugged from the matrix for very long without breaking into a cold sweat–was pretty excited to have free Wi-Fi on my Virgin America flight to Washington, D.C., early this morning.

The service from Gogo Inflight Internet is free since earlier this week until Jan. 15, courtesy of Google (GOOG), on Virgin, as well as at 47 airports. It usually costs anywhere from $6 to $13.

Like the search giant, other Web companies–presumably wanting to goose usage and, more to the point, their brands–have also leaped in.

Delta has a promotion with eBay (EBAY) on several hundred planes for a week around Thanksgiving, and Yahoo (YHOO) is footing the bill for anyone using computers or smartphones in Times Square in New York for one year.

Pretty much what the government and big cable and wireless companies should be doing, but let’s not look a digital gift horse in the mouth.

So far on the flight, the Internet has been pretty solid, although video plays even slower than my Comcast (CMCSA) connection at home.

Also, electricity on the flight has been in and out; when it doesn’t work, it pretty much negates Internet use on a long flight.

But more interesting, as most who use the Web in the air seem to feel, is the ability to make a lot of online connections, including with people on the same plane.

While I was no fan of the goofy seat-to-seat connections offered on some airlines, I did get an email from a Facebook public relations guy sitting in the row behind me on the same flight asking if I wanted to meet the social networking site’s DC staff.

Without ever seeing him I now have a meeting on Monday with them, so–apparently–mission accomplished!

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

TwinkedIn: The Reese's Cup Video of LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman and Twitter's Biz Stone

Kara Swisher — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:29:06 +0000

Guess what? It’s yet another online company going gaga over Twitter integration–this time LinkedIn is announcing a partnership with the microblogging service.

Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG) recently announced various ways they were lacing their various services with Twitter’s feed, mostly around search.

But LinkedIn’s partnership with Twitter is a little more robust and will roll out to everyone on the business networking site, according to a blog post by Allen Blue, LinkedIn’s co-founder and VP of product strategy:

“The idea is simple: When you set your status on LinkedIn you can now tweet it as well, amplifying it to your followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing. And when you tweet, you can send that message to your LinkedIn connections as well, from any Twitter service or tool.”

I spoke to Blue yesterday, and he said the deal was good for both sides.

“We want our users to get the broadest distribution possible to find what they are looking for,” said Blue. “And Twitter is trying to find ways to increase the value for business people on Twitter.”

Here is LinkedIn co-founder and Chairman Reid Hoffman and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone talking about the peanut butter and chocolate of it all in an adorkable video (it made me hungry, so excuse me while BoomTown goes and raids my kids’ Halloween stash):

Clutter-Free, Twittified, Binged (and Also Apple-icious): The New MSN Homepage Debuts (Plus Screenshots and the Press Release)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:15:34 +0000

The new MSN homepage debuts tonight and you would be completely correct in thinking the recipe Microsoft (MSFT) 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 (AAPL), 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 too.

(You can view a preview of the site here.)

The launch is the first major upgrade of the MSN main page in–if you can believe it–a decade, part of an overhaul that the software giant has been doing throughout its money-losing online services division.

That has included the launch of Bing in May, which has been a success for Microsoft, adding a small amount of search market share and, more importantly, some much needed respect to its long-beleaguered consumer Web efforts.

The company’s online execs are trying to keep up the innovation momentum with the new MSN redesign and–as you can see below from the various screenshots–it is a major shift for the portal site.

Together, MSN and Windows Live have about 100 million unique monthly visitors, putting Microsoft typically third behind Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO).

The company hopes to do better with a fresher MSN, which is clearly aimed, first and foremost, at clearing up the clutter and link-heavy old MSN homepage.

MSN execs said the new main page has about half the “blue” links.

(See a video interview I also did with MSN exec Bob Visse about all of this here, along with other videos Microsoft did with its MSN staff.)

The top of the new page features a big image module, with inline video and drastically reduced topic areas–as BoomTown has previously reported–limited to news, sports, entertainment, money and lifestyle.

Under that is a more customizable news module, to which feature tabs can also be added, such as for the World Series or–prolonged sigh–Balloon Boy coverage.

On the bottom left is a much-goosed local module that resolves to beefed-up local sites, which is right next another section featuring Bing top searches.

Bing is present in every part of the site now, with Microsoft stressing it and using its structured data to improve the consumer experience.

That’s important for Bing search too, since MSN provides 45 percent of its traffic.

Communications modules are to the right, midpage and on the bottom.

Unlike AOL and Yahoo, which have added the ability to put third-party email on their homepages, only Hotmail is now available on the new MSN, although this is likely to change soon.

But perhaps the design element that will garner the most attention is the prominent placement of both Twitter and Facebook tabs in the bottom communications module, right next to one for Windows Live.

This allows users to update their status and get instant access to the status of friends and followers.

“We wanted to cut the clutter, while also giving users one convenient place to find what they need quickly,” said Scott Moore, executive producer of MSN in the U.S., its most important market, in an interview earlier today with me.

“People are overloaded with information and they wanted us to fix that, even if the service is not ours.”

The focus on Facebook and Twitter was simply due to intense user interest in the popular social networking sites.

“Facebook has popped and Twitter was really growing,” said Moore, who noted that there was the possibility of adding other third-party apps in the future.

A heavy emphasis on apps was a key strategy of Yahoo’s homepage redesign, officially launched in late July, which SVP Tapan Bhat touted at an meeting with analysts last week as having increased page views and engagement.

Advertising on the page is perhaps the most conservative part, with units that remain largely as before.

The new MSN homepage will begin rolling out now, eventually reaching about 10 percent of users by early next year. After that, it is expected to become widely available to U.S. customers and then go worldwide.

Here are screenshots of the changes to peruse (click on top three images to make them larger):

Old Homepage:

New Homepage:

Local Edition:

Twitter Section:

Facebook Section:

And here is the official Microsoft press release:

New MSN Designed to Be the Best Home Page on the Web

Fresh, new design delivers best of Bing, latest in news and entertainment, instant access to Facebook and Twitter, and customized local information in one place.

REDMOND, Wash.–Nov. 3, 2009–Microsoft Corp. today unveiled a preview of its most significant home page redesign in over a decade. The new MSN home page is designed to be the best home page on the Web, with powerful Bing search, the top news and hottest entertainment, and some of the most popular social networks–all in a fresh new look. The new home page will deliver comprehensive local information from the new MSN local information offering, MSN Local Edition, also unveiled today. Beginning today, anyone can preview the new home page at http://preview.msn.com. The new home page will begin rolling out today and become widely available to U.S. customers early next year.

Ninety percent of people surveyed find home pages such as MSN to be valuable, and they like the convenience of a comprehensive site.* Nearly 100 million people in the U.S. visit MSN every single month, and MSN added over 10 million new customers in the last year alone. However, today’s sites often fall short of top customer needs and many haven’t kept up with evolving trends. Extensive customer research highlights that people want less clutter and easier access to information and services they care about, including search services that help them make decisions easier and faster.

“Now is the time to clean up the mess on the Web–people need less clutter and less hassle to find what matters most to them,” said Erik Jorgensen, corporate vice president, Microsoft. “Microsoft is uniquely invested in search, media experiences and technical innovation. Combining these assets to deliver our new MSN home page is a tremendous win for customers and advertisers.”

The clean, new MSN home page cuts through the clutter with 50 percent fewer links than the previous home page and a simplified navigation across news, entertainment, sports, money and lifestyle. The new MSN home page also embraces the latest customer trends by deeply integrating powerful search from Bing and providing easy access to Facebook, Twitter and Windows Live services, comprehensive local information and in-line video. Sophisticated technology powers the home page to deliver personally relevant information, and improved performance satisfies people’s need for speed.

New key features of the MSN home page include these:

* Innovative search technology from Bing. Deeper Bing integration on the new home page helps people make faster and more informed decisions and easily find the information they want from anywhere on the Web. Bing is deeply integrated as the core search service throughout the home page via key areas such as shopping, travel and local, and as a way of highlighting hot topics, trends or people.

* Information and news people care about. The new home page delivers against the No. 1 customer request–simplicity and ease of use–through its fresh design and smart categorization. In-line high-quality, top news and hot entertainment from trustworthy sources such as MSNBC, FOX Sports, Hulu and Hearst, and comprehensive local information provide a compelling one-stop shop for people to use as their home base online. More in-depth local information is offered on the new MSN Local Edition, which is the only local online source that smartly combines media with Bing search and provides access to real-time community news that is grouped by ZIP code.

* Convenient ways to communicate. Simplicity drove the clean integration of popular social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Windows Live “What’s New,” which aggregates up to 50 Web activities, including Yelp, Flickr, Pandora and more, onto the MSN home page. People no longer have to jump from site to site to update their status, tweets or see what their friends are up to; the new home page makes it easy to view and update in-line.

“Customers told us they want the latest information from their favorite sources, their friends and the breadth of the Web–and the new MSN home page delivers via a fresh new look and new features,” Jorgensen said. “Today is an important transformation for MSN, and it’s just the beginning.”

Dozen-Year Yahoo Tech Veteran Ash Patel to Take "Time Off"

Kara Swisher — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:59:17 +0000

Longtime Yahoo tech leader Ash Patel is taking some time off until early 2010.

Yahoo (YHOO) confirmed the break to BoomTown.

In recent days, many inside the company had mistakenly thought the 44-year-old EVP for Product Architecture & Strategy was departing the company for good.

Actually, it’s more of a sabbatical for Patel (pictured here).

“Ash will be taking some well-deserved time off to spend time with his family,” said Yahoo in a statement to me. “He will be returning to Yahoo! in early 2010.”

In his latest of many jobs at Yahoo, where he has been employed since 1996, Patel works with its products organization, run by CTO and EVP of Products Ari Balogh, “to drive the development of a comprehensive product strategy, as well as potential strategic deals, helping to evolve and evaluate its audience product and technology strategy.”

It’s one of many leadership positions Patel has had at Yahoo, as the company has reorganized many times over the years, including as EVP of its Audience Products Division, EVP of Platforms and Infrastructure, SVP of Platform Engineering and chief product officer.

He also played a key role as architect of several major Yahoo products, such as MyYahoo!, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Chat and many others.

In fact, Patel ended up in a major exec role in a reorg that former Yahoo CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang did in the summer of 2008.

But the appointment of Patel to head the new Global Products group was greeted with some internal dissent, since many were pushing for faster change and new management at the Silicon Valley icon.

Yang was said to have insisted that Patel remain on as planned. He reported directly to President Sue Decker.

Patel stayed on after new CEO Carol Bartz got the top job in January, which was the subject of much interest among longtime Yahoo staff, since he has been one of the few true Yahoo veterans left in a high-ranking role.

In another reorg in late February, this time by Bartz, Patel got his latest title and was placed under Balogh.

Here is a video interview I did with Patel last December about the launch of some open and social networking initiatives at Yahoo (SVP Tapan Bhat, who had once reported to Patel, is also in the video):

"Changing the World Through the Web": Video Interviews with Zuckerberg, Kutcher, Rospars and Shah

Kara Swisher — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:19:34 +0000

Yesterday, BoomTown moderated a panel at California First Lady Maria Shriver’s well-known Women’s Conference in Long Beach, titled “Changing the World Through the Web” for a crowd of several thousand people.

The panelists for my session at what has become one of the top forums for women’s issues 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.

It turned out to be a lively session with the sharp digitally-focused group, which was the first tech panel at the six-year-old conference.

Here are video interviews I did with each of them (and you can see other video scenes from the conference here):

[ See post to watch video ]

Exclusive: Microsoft's MSN Is in Early Talks With MySpace About Music Tie-Up

Kara Swisher — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:34:47 +0000

Microsoft’s MSN is in preliminary talks with MySpace about using the social networking site’s music service, MySpace Music, to help power music offerings on the giant portal.

While sources at both companies cautioned that the talks are still early, Microsoft (MSFT)–which has its own music site that it programs with original and partnered content–execs are interested in goosing it.

That’s because MSN Music consistently ranks substantially lower than other big online music properties in terms of traffic, while MySpace Music is always near the top.

Sources said Microsoft execs don’t think they can do as good a job as MySpace is doing and don’t see the point in striking needed but complex deals with music labels, which the News Corp. (NWS) property already has.

In an April report by comScore (SCOR), for example, MySpace Music was No. 2, just behind AOL Music, with 27.4 million unique monthly visitors. MSN Music was No. 6 with just 7.4 million.

Nonetheless, music is an area MSN cannot lag so badly in, given that entertainment is one of the key categories it is focusing on as it preps for a major renovation of the portal.

As BoomTown wrote in mid-July about a wide variety of changes coming to MSN:

MSN, Microsoft’s online portal, is also preparing a major redo of what U.S. and, possibly, international consumers will see, as it doubles down on five key content verticals, while cutting back on others.

In a new focus that will start to be apparent in the next month, MSN will heavily add to its News, Sports, Finance, Lifestyle and Entertainment offerings, weaving more data from [its search service] Bing into the mix.

“It’s a decision to make it so MSN does less better,” said one source close to the situation. “So there will be a focus of attention on a smaller number of categories in which we can be either #1 or #2 in, rather than #4 or #5.”

It is not clear exactly what the financial terms would be in any tie-up between MSN and MySpace, which could include licensing of content and other services related to music.

But such a deal is not unusual–MSN’s sports site is powered by Fox Sports, which is another News Corp. property.

And such a partnership would also key into concepts that MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta outlined in a recent interview onstage at the Web 2.0 conference.

Key among them was boosting music and entertainment overall and making them the prime focus in the site’s efforts at reinvigorating itself, as well as expanding distribution of MySpace.

In fact, MySpace recently bought social music service iLike to expand its distribution all over the Web, for example–including on Facebook, the longtime social networking rival from which MySpace is now trying mightily to differentiate itself.

In his appearance, Van Natta also unveiled a music video hub, the ability by users to buy music using Apple (AAPL) iTunes, and a set of better analytical tools–called MySpace Music Artist Dashboard–to help artists figure out how to best work with fans.

But MySpace needs more than these, and a link with Microsoft would provide it with a traffic gusher, since MSN’s main page remains one of the most trafficked sites on the Web.

If such a distribution partnership were struck, it would also raise the question of what will happen regarding MySpace’s negotiations with Google (GOOG) over renewal of their search deal, which expires next summer.

Dissatisfaction over the pricey three-year deal has been expressed by both sides; their mutual grumbling is one of the biggest open secrets in Silicon Valley.

Doing a search deal with Bing is the obvious and only alternative, although few expect any agreement to be as rich as the one MySpace did with Google in 2006 for $900 million.

Interestingly, it was recently reported that both Google and Facebook were bolstering music search and sales offerings, and Google’s apparently includes the use of the iLike player.

In other words: This could get really complicated.

Execs at both MySpace and Microsoft I reached out to declined to comment.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Kara Visits the Women's Conference (Questions for Ashton Kutcher, Please!)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:57:20 +0000

This morning, BoomTown will be onstage at California First Lady Maria Shriver’s well-known Women’s Conference in Long Beach, to moderate a panel titled “Changing the World Through the Web” for a crowd of 1,800 people.

The panelists for my session at what has become one of the top forums for women’s issues include Hollywood actor/producer, Katalyst co-founder and Twitter demigod Ashton Kutcher (pictured above, of course); 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.

In other words, as a group, they are all either prettier, smarter or better for the planet than anything I have ginned up so far.

But, to be safe, send some question suggestions quick that you think I should ask in the interview–via Twitter @karaswisher.

In any case, I shall press on and try to conduct myself with some kind of tech dignity, as I query the group on how the Web–especially social media–can empower people to change the world and be more than just one big pool of mundanities, meaningless status updates, silly apps and online gossip.

Speaking of which, it was a minor shock to run smack into reality show whatever-she-is Kate Gosselin at a speaker party last night, who is here to flack a book about–of course–her kids, titled “Eight Little Faces.”

No, I did not make that title up and I suppose it takes all kinds.

But it was especially surreal, since other speakers include–how shall I put this delicately?–much more serious and substantial women, such as primatology legend Dr. Jane Goodall, women’s rights activist Eve Ensler, Obama Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett, a spate of women news legends such as Katie Couric, and even–my personal favorite, for her cheery butter-loving nature–celebrity chef Paula Deen.

For those interested in seeing some of the all-day event online, there’s a live Webcast from the Web site, which you can access here (the Twitter hashtag is #wc09

I will, natch, post a video report later.

Microsoft's Qi Lu Talks About Bing (and Confirms Facebook and Twitter Real-Time Data Deal) at Web 2.0

Kara Swisher — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:30:52 +0000

Microsoft digital head Qi Lu took to the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit conference this morning, where he confirmed a “strategic” deal with both Facebook and Twitter to integrate real-time information into Microsoft’s Bing search service.

BoomTown broke news of those twin deals earlier today.

Bing’s Twitter integration in beta form is now live here (see an image of it below; click on it to make it larger).

Facebook’s integration will come later, said Microsoft (MSFT).

Before announcing the deal, Lu–who is a quintessential techie–first went a bit deep into the weeds to talk about “how we think about search.”

Said Lu: “To start with, we think about search holistically…it’s about user intent. What it amounts to is that you are trying to build a mind reader.”

Top MSN exec Yusuf Mehdi then bounded onstage to talk about the deals with Twitter and Facebook and do a demo, which was what the audience gathered in San Francisco wanted to hear about and see.

“If today’s search is about getting to the UPS or the FedEx site, tomorrow is much more complicated,” said Mehdi, who described the deals as “strategic.”

Google (GOOG) is also in talks with both Twitter and Facebook about a similar arrangement, but Microsoft’s move was a clear one-upsmanship with its search rival.

And what Mehdi showed was impressive, with the ability to sort tweets in a number of ways.

Such information in search will obviously improve results.

Lu gave few specific monetary or operational details of the service–such as if Facebook and Twitter get a cut of its search advertising revenue or if Microsoft will archive the status updates–mostly focusing on Twitter, since it is first to roll out.

“This is just the beginning,” said Lu. “The Twitter corpus…is still evolving and emerging.”

Added Lu at the end: “Give us a try!”

Here is Microsoft’s press announcement on the deals with two of Silicon Valley’s innovation hotshots:

This morning at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Qi Lu, President of Microsoft’s Online Services Division is announcing a new beta feature that enables people to easily search Twitter’s real-time information feed directly in Bing. This new feature helps people make better decisions and more fully understand Twitter conversations by collecting, analyzing and uniquely presenting real-time Twitter content.

More specifically, the new Twitter developments in Bing include:

A real-time index of the Tweets that match your search queries in results. This feature makes it easier to follow what’s going on by reducing the amount of duplicates, spam, and adult content.

Giving you the option to rank tweets either by most recent or by “best match,” where we consider a Tweeter’s popularity, interestingness of the tweet, and other indicators of quality and trustworthiness.

Providing the top links shared on Twitter around your specific search query by showcasing a few of the most relevant tweets. Additionally, Bing automatically expands those small URLs (like bit.ly) to enable you to understand what people are tweeting about. Instead of showing standard search result captions, we select 2 top tweets to give users a glimpse of the sentiment around the shared link.

You can try out the new Bing Twitter search beta here momentarily or learn more about it at the Bing blog. Please note that this is a U.S. only feature at this time.

Facebook Partnership

As part of his on-stage discussion at the summit, Dr. Lu is also announcing a global partnership with Facebook that will bring public Facebook status updates to Bing search results. The experience will be available at a later date.

Exclusive: Guess Who Else Is Coming to Dinner? Twitter-Microsoft Bing Deal Confirmed, but so Is Facebook-Bing.

Kara Swisher — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:41:44 +0000

In a stunning one-two punch, Microsoft will announce separate nonexclusive deals today with both Facebook and Twitter to integrate their real-time feeds of status updates into the Bing search service.

According to sources, Microsoft (MSFT) digital head Qi Lu will announce the deal onstage in a few hours at the Web 2.0 Summit.

BoomTown reported earlier today that the Microsoft data-mining deal with Twitter was poised to be announced.

But the addition of Facebook raises the stakes considerably because it has the largest pool of status updates, despite all the hype around Twitter. Facebook has previously stated that it has 40 million updates a day, on average, from its 300 million-plus audience.

Twitter has been talking to Google (GOOG) about a similar arrangement, and, according to sources, so has Facebook.

But the deal is a definite blow to the dominant search engine, since–for the first time–data will be available on Bing that are not available on Google.

Neither of the services is expected to be up and running for weeks, if not months. But there is the possibility of a demo today by Qi Lu of what it will look like.

What’s interesting about the deals, which have been in the works for several weeks, is that they will be very different.

Much of what is posted on Twitter is public by design, while Facebook users prefer the closed nature of the service to disperse a wide variety of personal information only to their friends, and they want to control it.

Thus, sources said, not all Facebook updates will be included in the real-time feed to be searched by Bing, but only those its users choose to make available to the wider public. Facebook will apparently provide users with a number of new tools to do so.

BoomTown first reported several weeks ago that Twitter was in advanced talks with both the search rivals about such a real-time search arrangement.

When asked about the talks onstage at Web 2.0 yesterday, Twitter CEO Evan Williams turned coy, according to numerous reports, joking “Whose deals?”

But, in fact, the San Francisco-based microblogging service was very much engaged in dealmaking aimed at gaining more visibility for the billions of tweets from its 54 million monthly users.

And so was Facebook, and it is probably a little irksome to Twitter that the rival social networking site will steal some of the thunder over the deal, which is sure to break out in the blogosphere today.

The two services represent the hugest trove of real-time and content-sharing information, generated from their massive data streams.

The deals with Microsoft might include a payment of several million dollars to both Facebook and Twitter, along with various revenue-sharing proposals that would give them a piece of the advertising revenue made from search results.

Doing these kinds of data deals with big search players does make a lot of sense, since it would be hard for both companies to turbocharge their own search engines without running into the big cash-laden guns at both Google and Microsoft, which recently launched the Bing search service.

Being deeply integrated into big search services would give both companies an even huger footprint.

Microsoft did a small experiment this past summer by integrating Twitter data into search results, starting with tweets of bloggers like me.

And the company provides search services to the Silicon Valley-based Facebook, part of a major investment deal it made several years ago.

Both Microsoft and Google had separately contemplated buying Twitter and Facebook in deals that never materialized.

But, if they both strike data deals with Twitter and Facebook, they will get the next best thing–an ability to offer all that real-time information to the masses from its most innovative sources.

As Traffic Booms, Is HuffPo Ready to Make Some Real Dough?

Kara Swisher — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:21:53 +0000

For the past few months, the Huffington Post has been on a bit of a tear–both in terms of traffic gains and in its hiring of some big talent for key positions.

Now, those execs are focusing on using that consumer momentum to achieve what has eluded the Huffington Post thus far: Making some serious bank from the privately held news and media site.

How to help marketers to better understand the site and, therefore, spur this significant monetization will be his main focus at the Huffington Post, said Greg Coleman to BoomTown in an interview over the weekend.

Coleman–a former Yahoo (YHOO) advertising exec, as well as one for Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL–was named president and chief revenue officer a month ago by Huffington Post’s new CEO, Eric Hippeau.

Hippeau, who was himself just appointed in June, is another well-known online media exec and has been a big investor and board member of the Huffington Post. (You can read a thorough interview by Staci Kramer with Hippeau on paidContent.)

“It’s important for advertisers to know how big we have gotten, while also highlighting this amazing audience of influencers we have gathered,” said Coleman, in his first media chitchat since taking on the job. “I think it is the beginning of a tipping point.”

Well, of course, Coleman would say that, as the guy looking to drum up interest among marketers in spending their money on the Huffington Post.

But stats seem to indicate that consumers are increasingly liking what the Huffington Post is creating, because it is starting to surpass some well-known media icons on the Web in traffic.

While more of this increase is going to be due to a socialization of the news–the Huffington Post has an aggressive deployment of Facebook Connect called HuffPost Social News–the growth is more about building a brand people trust and seek out.

According to recent reports from both comScore (SCOR) and Nielsen Online, for example, the site just became larger than several online brands of big media companies, such as the Washington Post (WPO), in terms of unique monthly visitors.

In its September report, Nielsen clocked the Huffington Post at 9.47 million uniques, up 26 percent, while the Post site was at 9.2 million–a drop of 30 percent.

According to the Nielsen, the Huffington Post is within spitting distance of USA Today’s Web site (9.9 million), a Gannett (GCI) property.

And, it is bigger than Hearst Newspapers Digital (7.9 million) and the BBC (7.2 million).

For September, comScore has the Huffington Post (at 6.83 million) besting the Post (6.77 million)–as well as WSJ.com (6.7 million), a unit of Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp. (NWS).

(The Wall Street Journal site, to be fair, makes a chunk of its revenue from subscription fees, rather than relying solely on advertising from traffic like the Huffington Post. And full disclosure: Dow Jones owns this site.)

In any case, big traffic is key for most news sites, and internal numbers from Google (GOOG) Analytics that Huffington Post execs cite are higher, as is typical for most sites, pegging traffic at about 27 million monthly uniques with more than two million reader comments per month.

Huffington Post co-founder and blogging icon Arianna Huffington attributes the recent boost in traffic to the site’s proclivity to “start conversations” that interest readers, such as her recent suggestion that Vice President Joe Biden should resign.

“We are aiming to go beyond just facts, to create a narrative,” said Huffington, who thinks the speed of news helps attract visitors to the site. “We think bringing journalism to a new level is exactly what people are looking for.”

Perhaps. But, even if traffic increases continue to bear her theories out, she and others have said that the Huffington Post still has not been regularly profitable despite doubling annual revenue–mostly in advertising–to what some estimate to be about $8 million in 2009.

While the site is aiming to invest rather than focus too hard on showing profits, Coleman said he would like to make revenue seven times larger in the next years, building on the performance of the site to vaunt past old media giants online.

“This kind of thing is a milestone for the marketing community,” he said. “Our goal is to be the top Internet newspaper, and this points out that we are on our way.”

To do that, he will have to spend some of the $37 million in funding that the Huffington Post has raised from venture investors.

While the edit side is using the money to expand the number of news categories, Coleman said his focus will be on building a higher caliber team of sales and marketing execs with deeper relationships to big clients.

“Unlike selling an auto page on Yahoo (YHOO), our site has a more complex sales process that takes some time for people to understand,” said Coleman. “But once they get it, it should be an easier sale.”

Until then, check out the video of the entire interview I did at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference with Huffington and Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth in which they talk about the future of journalism and more:

[ See post to watch video ]

Ford's Social Media Guru Scott Monty: "Social Media Is the Cocaine of the Communications Industry"

Kara Swisher — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:53:31 +0000

Today, BoomTown got the best quote ever from Scott Monty, when I asked him over lunch about his comparison of social media tools to an illicit drug.

“Social media is the cocaine of the communications industry,” said Monty, who has been global digital and multimedia communications manager for Ford Motor Company (F) since mid-2008.

Riding that Twitter train, high on Facebook cocaine?

I got him to repeat it, during a keynote interview with him at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas.

While we had some sound problems–par for the course at conferences–Monty got the attention of the crowd with the metaphor, especially after he launched into a spot-on impression of comic Bill Cosby doing a famous bit about cocaine.

All joking aside, Monty did make what was a very good point about the sometimes explosive impact of social networking media compared to the traditional kind.

Monty channeled Cosby for me again for a video interview here, in which we talk about that and also about how big companies are dealing with social media.

Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]