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Friday, September 19, 2008

New Microsoft Ads Win Most Improved Award (It Wasn’t Hard Though)

Here are videos of three of the new “I’m a PC” ads, from Microsoft’s next phase of its Vista-doesn’t-bite advertising campaign.

You can decide if you like them or not. But BoomTown is declaring them a vast improvement on the quirky initial commercials that featured Microsoft Founder Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

The software giant seems to be returning from its short visit in hipville to a more normal marketing message, with an it’s-a-small-world-after-all panoply of people declaring that they are all PCs.

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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Seinfeld and Gates Ads Over: Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That!

While the very quirky ads rolled out by Microsoft to tout itself, starring Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld, got a ton of hype, it turns out there will be no more than than three already released.

It seems the churros have gone cold.

According to a Microsoft spokesman, the ads were apparently just a warmup for more to come, as early as tomorrow, and though the new ones will not use Seinfeld in any significant way, they might still feature Gates.

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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Yahoo’s New Marketing Push: Purple Rain! (Actually, Purple Pain.)

First off, as Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski pointed out to me today, you have to give Yahoo props for using Gogol Bordello as the soundtrack and–more to the point–actually knowing about Gogol Bordello in the first place.

“Since when does [Yahoo CEO Jerry] Yang listen to gypsy punk?” asked Paczkowski in an email to me today.

Since Bill Gates started eating churros with Jerry Seinfeld and adjusting his skivvies hands-free, that’s when!

Oh dear, Yahoo has succumbed to the hipster, ironic thing–an unfortunate marketing virus that has hit Microsoft of late, too–in an under-the-covers “Start Wearing Purple” online marketing campaign.

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Thursday, August 7, 2008

That’s Hot: Paris Hilton Strikes Back at the “White-Haired Dude”

In a tempest-in-a-teapot political scandalette, Republican Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain used images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears in a television ad attacking his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, as a celebrity.

It was tasteless and also offensive to Hilton and Spears, which seems an almost impossible task–way to go!

Now, wasting no time in taking advantage of the brouhaha and drawing attention just where it should be–to herself, of course–Hilton did this clever video spoof for the Funny or Die comedy Web site.

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Dear Disgruntled Yahoos, Microsoft Is Hiring!

Microsoft took out a full-page ad in the San Jose Mercury News today, in an attempt to highlight its recruiting efforts in Silicon Valley.

Of course, BoomTown is not sure the crack engineers that Microsoft is seeking actually read newspapers, but we like the software giant’s spunk at a little creative Google-smacking and Yahoo-employee-baiting.

With the headline: “Microsoft Has Search Jobs in the Valley,” the ad goes on to tout Microsoft’s commitment to search and online advertising in a come-on to join the company’s 2,000 other employees in Mountain View, Calif.

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Thursday, October 11, 2007

Update of Facebook Funding Update: Google’s Hail-Mary Pass?

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.
It’s an open secret in Silicon Valley that search giant Google grabbed YouTube from Yahoo at the last minute in a deal-making frenzy.
I didn’t mean in my last update posted earlier today to leave out that possibility happening again with regard to Facebook’s current round of funding [...]

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Thursday, July 26, 2007

Digg Down Deep and You’ll Find Steve Ballmer’s Not Monkeying Around

It is no secret that Microsoft has a serious case of Google envy when it comes to the online ad business, after the typically dominating tech giant has continued to lag behind the search king in the lucrative business.
But it should also have become crystal clear by now that Microsoft–and especially its famously aggressive [...]

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Monday, July 16, 2007

Yahoo Earnings–There’s Got to Be a Morning After?

Will this be the last shoe to drop–at least this month–at Yahoo?

Tomorrow, the struggling Internet search giant will announce its second quarter earnings at 5 p.m. EDT (2 p.m. PDT).
The company is expected to have no gain in profit year to year. That translates to 11 cents a share for the quarter on $1.24 billion [...]

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About Kara

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. Read more »

Ethics Statement

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.

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