BoomTown » Amazon

"V" Is Very, Very, Very V-abulous, but Not Online

Kara Swisher — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:34:35 +0000

ABC certainly is taking its sweet time in releasing the first episode of “V,” a sci-fi television series that debuted earlier this week on the Web in any substantial way.

The network is showing about nine minutes of the redo of the 1980s miniseries about a lizardy alien invasion disguised as a peace mission by outerspace hotties online on its site.

But pretty much the only way you could watch “V” in its entirety this week, if you missed its broadcast Tuesday, is by buying it on Amazon.

It initially streamed there free, to build momentum, as well as on Apple (AAPL) iTunes, but now the only place you can get it–if you fork over $2–is Amazon (AMZN).

That all changes tomorrow, when the show–whose debut racked up surprisingly high numbers at 13.9 million viewers–shows up for free on ABC’s site and on the Disney (DIS) network’s joint venture video partner, Hulu.

If you cannot wait, here is the extended promo video for “V,” with a glimpse of scaly badness, as well as a preview of the show next week:

Lonely Planet Names New U.S. Head as Its Digital Strategy Escalates

Kara Swisher — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:33:28 +0000

Lonely Planet, best known as a traditional travel guidebook publisher, is announcing a new U.S. head tomorrow, as it increasingly moves to reposition the company as much more of a “cross-media” platform.

John Boris–set to take over today as new managing director of Lonely Planet Americas, based at its Oakland, Calif., office–comes to the company from Zagat Survey, where he was the SVP of marketing and interactive.

Previous to that, Boris worked at 1-800 Flowers and Fresh Direct.

“I’m thrilled to be joining one of the world’s best-loved travel brands at such an exciting time, with Lonely Planet rapidly evolving as a cross-media travel player,” he said in a press release.

As the paid versus free content online debate gets louder over the next year, how well known brands like Lonely Planet–which has a strong reputation among consumers–handle the fallout will be more and more interesting to watch.

Indeed, in recent months, Lonely Planet has been escalating its digital content efforts, which was the initial promise when BBC Worldwide bought 75 percent of the Melbourne, Australia-based company for about $200 million in late 2007.

But the digitization of Lonely Planet’s business, as with many traditional media publishers like it, has been slow going, with 75 percent of its revenue still in print.

While that business remains profitable, the breakdown between print and digital will be changing sooner than later, since digital is where much of the growth is coming from, said CEO Matt Goldberg to me over a recent dinner in San Francisco.

Goldberg–who came to Lonely Planet early this year from Dow Jones, where he was SVP of digital strategy and operations, including for WSJ.com–noted that Lonely Planet’s digital businesses have doubled their revenues to $20 million this year via premium pricing and advertising.

Besides the obvious use of Twitter and Facebook, Goldberg flagged a number of the more promising and innovative digital initiatives now at work at Lonely Planet, especially in its key U.S. market.

They include:

* Leveraging the 700,000 registered members of Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree community,

* The announcement this week of putting all or part of 600 of its travel guides on the international release of the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle e-reader.

* Work on collaborative trip planning for its “Trippy” gadget, as part of the Google Wave beta launched last week.

* A compass application for Google (GOOG) Android handsets that make use of augmented reality technology to highlight points of interest in cities. As Goldberg described it in an email, travelers will be able to “pan a city destination using the video on their handset and see Lonely Planet recommendations (points of interest from our City Guides) as virtual sticky notes above real live points of interest.”

* Over 500,000 downloads from around 70 premium-priced apps on the iPhone from Apple (AAPL), as well as various location-based guide apps for Nokia (NOK) and BlackBerry from Research in Motion (RIMM).

* Travel music collections featured on Spotify and other online music services.

Goldberg highlighted other interesting ideas, such as an online travel video contest and even a “hack” day in Australia recently, which will be followed by one in the U.S. in the late winter.

While not all of it is going to work, this kind of endless experimentation at Lonely Planet is probably the right way to keep figuring out how to deal with the seismic media shifts that show no sign of abating.

It's Opposite Day: Yahoo Grabs a Microsoft Exec!

Kara Swisher — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:21:52 +0000

For a long time now, it has been Microsoft constantly raiding the Yahoo talent pool, as one top tech exec after another has left its Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ to join the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant.

As Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski noted in a post in March titled, “Microsoft Acquiring Yahoo One Employee at a Time”:

First, Sean Suchter, VP of search technology at Yahoo, left to become general manager of Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Search Technology Center. Then, Yahoo search scientist Qi Lu followed him, tapped as president of Microsoft’s Online Services Group. And, soon after that, Larry Heck, former VP of search & advertising sciences at Yahoo Labs, accepted a job in the R&D department of the software giant’s online services division. Now, Yahoo alum Jan Pedersen has joined them as well. Admittedly, Pedersen arrives at Microsoft by way of Amazon’s A9.com. But prior to that gig, he was chief scientist and VP, Search and Advertising Technology Group at Yahoo.

But Yahoo U.S. advertising sales head Joanne Bradford–who worked at Microsoft (MSFT) for many years–obviously knows how to play that game and has managed to grab one of the its top ad sales execs, Seth Dallaire.

Yahoo (YHOO) confirmed that Dallaire (pictured here) joined the company last week, as VP of mid-market sales, a newly-created role responsible for all mid-market sales efforts across search and display advertising.

Dallaire had been at Microsoft for seven years, most recently running its retail vertical and Midwest region. Previous to that, he ran business development partnerships at Amazon (AMZN).

New Yorker: Bezos' Initial Google Investment Was $250K in 1998 Because "I Just Fell in Love With Larry and Sergey"

Kara Swisher — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:30:36 +0000

Considering the ongoing skirmishes going on right now between Amazon and Google over digital book publishing, it’s more than ironic that Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos was one of only a few initial investors in the search giant.

But–in one of the many interesting details in New Yorker author Ken Auletta’s new book, “Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It”–it was indeed Bezos who invested $250,000 in the start-up in 1998 at four cents a share.

(Some previous reports have had it at six cents a share and at a $100,000 level.)

Three of the others, according to Auletta, all of whom ponied up the same amount, were Stanford University computer science professor David Cheriton, entrepreneur Ram Shriram and Sun Microsystems (JAVA) co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim.

Later, more angels invested in Google (GOOG), followed by the big $25 million venture round by Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital in mid-1999.

While it was known back when Google went public in 2004 that Bezos held about three million shares in the IPO (Auletta said it was precisely 3.3 million shares), the book has a lot of the details about the meeting between him and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the Menlo Park, Calif., garage of current Google exec Susan Wojcicki.

He had been brought there, according to the book, by Shriram, who had sold his company, Junglee, to Amazon (AMZN) in 1998.

“I just fell in love with Larry and Sergey,” Bezos told Auletta in an interview–not that there’s anything wrong with that considering the flip-flop relationships of Silicon Valley.

He’d presumably be more in love–and less inclined to be fighting Google, first in search with A9 and now in online publishing–if he had held onto those shares.

That stock would be worth $1.6 billion today.

But a spokesman for Amazon declined to comment on what Bezos did with his Google stake, noting it was a personal investment.

Interestingly, Bezos is also an early investor in the current hotsy-totsy microblogging start-up, Twitter.

A part of Auletta’s book, which is slated to come out Nov. 3, is in this week’s New Yorker in an excerpt called “Searching for Trouble.” It is, oddly, not available online.

In any case, the piece is mostly about the various ways Brin and Page dissed big media moguls, figuratively (destroying old media advertising business models) and literally (showing up at meetings sweaty and wearing skates and gym shorts).

Good thing they never did that to Bezos.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Scribd CEO Trip Adler Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:01:24 +0000

Yesterday, BoomTown checked in with Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar about the document sharing start-up.

Today, it’s Trip Adler, CEO of its much larger rival, Scribd.

Launched in early 2007, the San Francisco-based online publishing company allows customers to share a wider range of documents, including books and manuscripts. It now claims to have 10 million documents uploaded.

Recently, some of those landed Scribd in a bit of hot water, with a lawsuit filed by an author alleging copyright violations. The lawsuit claimed that the start-up “built a technology that’s broken barriers to copyright infringement on a global scale.”

No surprise, Scribd denied the allegations.

“Scribd does not want unauthorized content on our site,” the company said. “We built the industry’s leading (filtering) technology to prevent the upload of unauthorized documents. This is one of the reasons why best-selling authors and many of the world’s largest publishers have chosen to put their works on Scribd.”

That includes a deal this summer with Simon & Schuster, a division of CBS (CBS), to sell digital copies of its books, offering publishers more control over pricing and how works are distributed.

Such efforts to become a kind of YouTube for text is certainly part of the plan for Scribd, which has garnered about $13 million in funding, including from Redpoint Ventures.

Of course, YouTube owner Google (GOOG) also has designs in the arena–although it has become embroiled in loud legal battles over the issue with publishers. And so does Kindle-creator Amazon (AMZN), of course.

Those are mighty rivals, along with the need to police itself.

Scribd’s traffic has declined from about 60 million unique monthly visitors to half that recently as it has tried to get a good handle on piracy and other reasons. That traffic has since recovered a bit to about 40 million.

The company has also been adding features, including making the site more social, in order to goose online document and book sales and advertising.

Here’s the video interview with Adler about the business:

[ See post to watch video ]

BoomTown Will See You in September

Kara Swisher — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:00:28 +0000

Starting today and through next week, BoomTown is headed south down California’s lovely Highway 1 for as much of a vacation as I can possibly take.

Which is to say, just a week off from posting (if one does pop up, forgive me, but it was probably already baked).

In other words: iLike twins, Wenda, Owen, play nice! Yahoos, please hold onto your internal memos. And I hope Apple’s iTablet is not delivered from on high this week while I relax beachside (it won’t be).

This summer has been unusually news-laden for the digital sector–the Yahoo (YHOO) deal with Microsoft (MSFT); all the machinations at News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, Facebook and Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL; various and sundry Google (GOOG) battles; some tasty Amazon (AMZN) follies; Palm (PALM) Pre-ambulations; and, of course, more Apple (AAPL) hijinks than you can count.

Oh yeah, and whatever Twitter fill-in-the-blank-you-like.

But I digress, and will now return to my annual scheduled programming–a blog-free week with some really interactive time with the kids and family in Santa Monica.

This week is a particularly good time to take time–a big birthday celebration for my Twitter-bashing mother and also a 10th wedding anniversary (an inexplicable event, except to say–given it is me we’re talking about–that I obviously married a saint).

For all that and more, see you in September. (Actually, August 31, but who’s counting?)

And, until then, here is a cool video of someone playing a 45 of that great song by the Happenings on an old turntable:

Ex-Google Exec Singh Cassidy Getting Dressed for Success by Joining J. Crew Board?

Kara Swisher — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:53:21 +0000

Oh, it’s the middle of August, so why not report this little tidbit: Former Google exec Sukhinder Singh Cassidy has been appointed to the board of the J. Crew Group, the well-known New York-based specialty retailer.

She is now a CEO-in-Residence at Accel Partners in Palo Alto, Calif., after leaving her longtime job at Google (GOOG), where she was president of its Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations.

Previous to her stint at the search giant, Singh Cassidy was at Yodlee, an online banking start-up, which was backed by Accel–along with stints at Amazon (AMZN) and OpenTV (OPTV).

She was also one of Google’s more visible execs and highest-ranking women leaders.

So, of course, BoomTown is more interested in where the 39-year-old Singh Cassidy will land next as a top exec at a Silicon Valley Web operation.

But, until then, here’s the official press release about her new director job at J. Crew (JCG):

NEW YORK, Aug. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/–J. Crew Group, Inc. (the “Company”) (NYSE: JCG) today announced that Sukhinder Singh Cassidy had been appointed to its Board of Directors, effective August 14, 2009. In addition, Jonathan Coslet, has advised the Company of his intention to resign from the Board of Directors, effective August 14, 2009 in order to focus on his responsibilities at TPG Capital L.P.

Ms. Singh Cassidy, 39, is CEO-in-residence at Accel Partners, a global venture and growth equity firm, since April 2009. Prior to that, Ms. Singh Cassidy was a global Vice-President of Sales and Operations for Google, Inc., and from 2005 to 2009 she was Google’s President for Asia-Pacific & Latin America Operations. From 2003 to 2005, she was Google’s General Manager of Local Search, Video and Print Partnerships.

Millard Drexler, J.Crew’s Chairman and CEO said, “We are pleased to welcome Sukhinder to our Board. Her experience with new media and internet strategy make her a great fit for our Board of Directors and for J.Crew. We also want to thank Jonathan for his many contributions and support over the years.”

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Qualcomm Chairman and CEO Paul Jacobs Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:09:19 +0000

While in Southern California last week, BoomTown sat down with Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs to have a chat about the booming market for smart phones and, well, smart everything.

Here, among other topics, he talks about another new moniker–a smart book–which is not a netbook and not a smart phone, but essentially a smart phone that runs like a low-powered, always-on laptop computer.

Jacobs certainly hopes such innovative devices will take off, as his company is going to be one of the ones to benefit from such an explosion. In fact, a slowdown in the mobile market was behind the drop in quarterly profit Qualcomm announced last week.

But the San Diego-based tech firm also raised estimates, given that it concentrates on the fast-growing and fast-forward smart phone market, such a 3G handsets, and making profits from licensing patents on its technology in the arena.

With all the swirl around iPhones from Apple (AAPL), the Palm (PALM) Pre, the various new BlackBerrys from Research in Motion (RIMM) and whatever else gets cooked up by Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG) and others in the critical smart and mobile device market, it’s interesting to hear what Jacobs has to say.

Here’s the video interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

Amazon Buys Netflix? Microsoft Is a Much Better Guess as a Potential Acquirer.

Kara Swisher — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:37:13 +0000

Yesterday, shares of Netflix got their semiregular rocket boost–with its stock up more than five percent to close at just over $42–from rumors that Amazon was interested in buying Netflix.

Oh, it’s a seemingly dreamy match–the top online retailer snapping up the upstart U.S. mail-order DVD movie and television show service.

But the speculation completely ignored the giant price needed to buy the Silicon Valley-based Netflix (NFLX)–well above its current $2.43 billion market cap, to be sure–which would be a big chunk of Amazon’s $35 billion valuation.

And it also leaves out the nearly impossible tax problem Amazon (AMZN) would acquire if it ever bought Netflix, given that Netflix has many U.S. distribution locations for its subscription rental business. Amazon does not like paying state taxes and avoids them carefully.

Instead, those interested in seeing the independent company in the embrace of a larger one might want to consider a more suitable and very interested candidate: Microsoft.

Neither Microsoft (MSFT) nor Netflix will comment about such a hookup.

But several sources close to Microsoft told BoomTown that that the partnership between Netflix and Xbox Live to allow users to watch movies and TV episodes on the Xbox 360 device–struck exactly one year ago today–is going like gangbusters, with one saying it was “en fuego.”

Very loosely translated: On fire.

So much so, several sources said, that Robbie Bach–who is president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, which includes the Xbox business–has been meeting with Netflix CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings (pictured) in recent weeks about what else the pair can do together to expand its current partnership.

The deal already in place between them is a hit, according to sources at both companies.

It gave Netflix access to 12 million Xbox members and handed Microsoft what has turned out to be a very popular application and an unusually successful joint effort.

While an acquisition would be a much bigger move, some at the software giant think it would necessarily be such a bad one for Microsoft, which has long been seeking to forge better ties in the entertainment arena.

Many of Microsoft’s major Hollywood forays over the years have been duds. So, stronger ties with Netflix–even a more robust partnership, at the very least–would give it a more definitive video strategy most think it lacks.

Its archrival, Google (GOOG), has been trying–with similarly lackluster impact–to accomplish the same results via its pricey and money-losing YouTube unit.

But Netflix–which has an office in Beverly Hills, as well as Los Gatos, Calif.–has much better relationships with the industry there, mostly because it has become such a big buyer of DVDs as it has grown its business (see charts below of subscriber and revenue growth; click on them to make them larger).

In addition, it has added more subscribers than ever in the last year and is solidly profitable, mostly due to sending consumers all those DVDs in little red envelopes.

And while a lot of execs at Hollywood studios that Netflix does business with have been wary–and told me so in no uncertain terms on my recent visit to Los Angeles–about its entry into the digital video delivery business, they have also been thrilled with the checks that Netflix has been writing them since it was founded more than a decade ago.

But, it is that main DVD business that Hastings, in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal recently, has said is “doomed.”

Noted the article:

“As soon as four years from now, [Hastings] predicts, the business that generates most of Netflix’s revenue today will begin to decline, as DVDs delivered by mail steadily lose ground to movies sent straight over the Internet. So Mr. Hastings, who co-founded the company, is quickly trying to shift Netflix’s business–seeking to make more videos available online and cutting deals with electronics makers so consumers can play those movies on television sets.”

With Internet video still in its infancy–and barely in gestation in terms of any viable business model–Netflix might indeed need help, especially since Hollywood has been slow to give it rights to more movies for online distribution.

That will be increasingly troublesome, given that digital delivery is the way consumers are headed. According to the Journal story, over 20 percent of Netflix members now use the streaming service.

But it only has about 12,000 titles–mostly older films–licensed on its online service, compared to 100,000 DVD rental titles.

That’s because, for now, much more powerful pay channels usually win out over Netflix in these online video distribution wars, which also include Amazon and Apple (AAPL), along with many others.

Thus, even with a strong and unusually long-term executive bench, the close-knit Netflix will still be facing a major battle in moving in a direction it must head in sooner than later

Such an epic journey could be easier for Netflix with a powerful ally like Microsoft.

One more interesting link would make such a relationship even smoother: Hastings is also on the board of Microsoft, having joined in 2007.

So, the savvy and innovative entrepreneur–well-known for his close-to-the-vest dealmaking and eager to not miss a key turn for his company–might very well decide to keep friends very close.

Plastic Logic: The Full D7 Demo

Kara Swisher — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:11:32 +0000

Reading books and newspapers on a handheld device has gotten to be a hot arena in the consumer electronics business, especially after the introduction of the Kindle from Amazon (AMZN).

Plastic Logic will come on the market next year with its e-reader offering. So, the Silicon Valley-based company gave a sneak preview of the device, including a first look at the gadget’s innovative touchscreen user interface at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

Look ma, no keyboard!

In all seriousness, the controversies around how content is going to be paid for and delivered have been growing over the last year, as media companies struggle to reinvent troubled business models.

Here’s the full D7 demo to Walt Mossberg and me:

[ See post to watch video ]

Exclusive: Brand Head Olivo Out at Yahoo

Kara Swisher — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:22:23 +0000

Allen Olivo, SVP of global brand marketing at Yahoo, is leaving the company, according to sources.

The high-level departure is the latest at Yahoo (YHOO), as major executive changes continue. It was announced today internally.

Yahoo confirmed the departure in a statement to BoomTown: “After more than three years at Yahoo!, Allen Olivo is leaving the company to pursue other interests. Allen has been a dedicated and valued member of the Yahoo! team and we wish him well in his future endeavors. Allen will remain at Yahoo! for a period of time in order to ensure a smooth transition.”

Olivo ran brand marketing for the Silicon Valley-based Internet giant, which is about to undergo a major new push under CEO Carol Bartz.

Olivo was reportedly up for the chief marketing officer job, which went to former NetApp (NTAP) marketing exec Elisa Steele recently.

Olivo joined Yahoo in early 2006 and has been responsible for “overseeing all aspects of its advertising and brand marketing strategy worldwide, including design and editorial.”

He’s worked at a variety of marketing jobs, including at the San Francisco Chronicle, Robertson Stephens, Amazon (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL).

Why Robert Scoble Is Wronger About "2010 Web": A BoomTown Translation!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:37:14 +0000

Oh, Scooby-Don’t…

You could not be more wrong in your post last week–titled, “Why Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg are wrong about naming Web 3.0 ‘Web 3.0′”–about Walt and I being wrong about naming Web 3.0 “Web 3.0″ in an essay we posted at the start of our D: All Things Digital conference, which took place last week.

I know writing “Kara Swisher,” “Walt Mossberg” and “Wrong” is well-nigh irresistible, but your solution of calling the digital era we are in the “2010 Web” is equally confusing and incorrect.

So, since you know I love to do translations, let me try to take apart your entire piece paragraph by paragraph:

What Scooby-Don’t wrote: Can we just head this trend off at the pass? It seems that Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, at their “All Things D” conference announced the beginning of the Web 3.0 era.

That’s ridiculous.

And I’m not the only one to think so.

BoomTown response: Walt and I simply wrote an essay in which we said we thought mobile and smart phones were super important as the next platform and represented what we thought Web 3.0 innovations, such as social networking (which we also think is important, by the way) would pivot around.

We didn’t “announce” anything, although that does sound awfully grand.

But so what if we did, because it happens quite a lot?

Dan Gillmor, for goodness sake, declared it Web 3.0 in 2005. His take was different:

“The emerging web is one in which the machines talk as much to each other as humans talk to machines or other humans. As the net is the rough equivalent of a computer operating system, we’re learning how to program the web itself.”

And in 2007, Tim O’Reilly weighed in on it, responding to Web 3.0 theses by Jason Calacanis and Nova Spivack, and also noting Stowe Boyd’s thoughts on the subject.

You get my point, Bobby? Lots of folks have opinions about what is Web 3.0, much as they will when we start arguing over what Web 4.0 is.

At Web 5.0, of course, a self-aware Google (GOOG) will have begun its inevitable war with the human race, sending back a cyborg to terminate you before you wrote that post, thereby making this rebuttal moot.

But, I digress!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Short aside: It’s interesting that neither Kara nor Walt show up very often on friendfeed, which is the best example of the 2010 Web right now. Kara Swisher has made a total of five comments there. Walt is even worse, doesn’t bring any items in there, and only has six comments. How can you know what the 2010 Web is, if you don’t use it and don’t participate in it?

BoomTown response: The fact of the matter is that neither Walt nor I like to use FriendFeed as much as you do. I daresay that no one likes to use FriendFeed as much as you do.

Thus, hinging a larger point to this, just because we don’t play in a particular sandbox you like to play in, feels a little too much in the digital weeds to me.

Just because you have chosen to be the unofficial spokesmodel for the very laudable service–about which I have done a very lovely reported post on complete with video–I am not clear why you need to accuse Walt Mossberg and I of not being social because we don’t use it as much.

We both just happen to prefer Twitter and blogging as our social outlets.

I have done 3,255 updates on Twitter since I started last year, for example, which is certainly not as much as your 21,224. But–and I think we can all agree–as blabby as I am, I am simply not as blabby as you.

So, let’s try to make this as clear as possible.

We. Don’t. Use. FriendFeed. Regularly.

As I said, we use Twitter, we use Facebook, we use SMS, we use blogging and we use a whole lot more. In fact, between us, we try out pretty much everything.

While I appreciate that FriendFeed seems to be your home planet of the moment, it is not the only place to realize your term, 2010 Web, and it feels very Web 1.0 to say so.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: The Web does NOT have version numbers. Naming what was going on in the last eight years “Web 2.0″ did us all a large disservice (Tim O’Reilly did that, mostly to get people to see that there was something different about the Web that was being built in 2000-2003 than what had come before).

But by naming it a number, I believe it caused a lot of people and businesses to avoid what was going on and “poo poo” it as the rantings of the new MySpace generation (which was just getting hot back then).

BoomTown response: Let me see if I can get this straight. You can call it 2010 Web, but we cannot use version numbers, such as Web 3.0?

Hey, we’ll call it Britney Spears if we want!

Actually, I like naming the next era of the Web after the always volatile entertainer. She’s mobile, ever-changing, ubiquitous and always entertaining! Also, there are several eras of Britney: Sweet, Timberlake Lady, Federline Lady, Young Mom, Nuts, Nuttier, Nuttiest, Hospitalized, Medicated.

My main point remains: Who died and made you Boss of Pointless Internet Catchphrases?

Scooby-Don’t wrote: See, the Web changes EVERY DAY and a version number just doesn’t do it justice. Think about today, we saw Microsoft (MSFT) announce a major new update to its search engine, named “Bing,” that turns on next week and is already getting TONS of kudos. Seriously, in the rental car shuttle today a guy I met said the demo he saw at Kara and Walt’s conference was “awesome.”

Also today was Google’s Wave, which caught everyone by surprise and which sucked the oxygen out of Microsoft’s search announcements. Check out all the reports that I liked from around the world this morning.

BoomTown response: The Web changes EVERY DAY? You’re kidding! We had no idea! Thanks for that critical morsel of info!

Earth to Robert: Walt has spent a large part of his life writing about the panoply of new devices that have come out in an unceasing flow and I have written at least 10,000 news stories and two books about the Web since the early 1990s.

Pretty much all we write about is how the Web changes every day. Actually, every second.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: But, back to the theme of this post. There IS something going on here. I covered it a few weeks ago.

The things that are happening are NOT just Twitter and search. Here, let me recount again what is making up the 2010 Web:

1. Real Time. Google caught the Wave of that trend today BIG TIME.

2. Mobile. Google, again, caught that wave big time Wednesday when it handed Android phones to everyone at its IO conference.

3. Decentralized. Does Microsoft or Twitter demonstrate that trend? Not really well.

4. Pre-made blocks. I call this “copy-and-paste” programming. Google nailed it with its Web Elements (I’ll add a few of those next week).

5. Social. Oh, have you noticed how much more social the web is? The next two days I’m hanging out on an aircraft carrier with a few people who do social media for the Navy.

6. Smart. Wolfram Alpha opened a lot of people’s eyes to what is possible in new smart displays of information.

7. Hybrid infrastructure. At the Twitter Conference this week lots of people were talking about how they were using both traditional servers along with cloud-based approaches from Amazon (AMZN) and Rackspace (RAX) to store, study, and process the sizeable datasets that are coming through Twitter, Facebook, and friendfeed.

BoomTown Response: We had folks on stage at our D7 conference discussing all this last week. In fact, we covered a whole lot more than that, which you can read about if you click on through.

While I think all yours are also interesting ideas, I am still not clear why you need to get your knickers in a knot, since we happened to think mobile platforms and smart phones are more important trends at this juncture.

Also, could please explain how Google “caught that wave big time Wednesday when it handed Android phones to everyone at its IO conference.” Google is innovative because they give free swag to folks?

We gave free swag to folks this week at D7, so I guess that makes Walt and I 2010-Web-worthy!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: So, why doesn’t a version number work for these changes? Because they don’t come at us all at once. A lot of these things have been cooking for years. The Internet makes iteration possible. Tomorrow will be better on the Internet than today. In the old world of software you’d have to wait for the compilers, then you’d need to distribute tons of CDs or disks. That no longer needs to be done.

The idea that we have a version for the Web is just plain ridiculous. It makes the innovations we’re implementing too easily dismissed. How many times have you heard that “Twitter is lame?” I lost count 897 days ago.

Now, is using a year number, like what I’m doing, better? Yes. It gets us out of the version lock. And it makes it clear to businesses that if you are still driving around a 1994 Web site that it’s starting to look as old and crusty as a 1994 car is about now. Executives understand this. It’s a rare executive who drives an old car around. Most like to have the latest expensive car to get to work in.

Same with the Web. Calling it the “2010 Web” puts an urgency into what’s happening. If your business isn’t considering the latest stuff it risks looking lame or, worse, leaving money on the table. Just like driving a 1994 car risks looking lame or, worse, breaking down a lot more often than a newer car.

BoomTown response: Actually, I would have to say that your year numbering system is deeply confusing and I am not sure we can treat Internet development like some auto or, even, say, fine wine.

Ah, that 1995 Web was saucy with a smooth Netscape IPO finish, while 2001 had a disappointing popped-bubble tone, due to the excessive tannins of Pets.com. Now, the 2009 is still very young, but it has a frothy Twittery taste, which goes surprisingly well with brie.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Is the year metaphor perfect? No, I’m sure there are a few things wrong with it. For one, if you want to host a conference based on the “trend” you’ll have to change your conference name every year. That costs money, which is why conference companies like to have more stable trends that they can exploit for a few years, at least.

BoomTown response: D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7. So far, changing the number has worked out well for us that we’re going to go for D8!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Also, there are some clear “eras” in the Web, so I could see wanting to suggest that we’re in the third era of the Web, but I’ve been studying this for the past eight years and calling the second era “Web 2′ actually held us back because mainstream users didn’t think anything was happening in the past few years and Web 2.0 became a useless phrase anyway.

BoomTown response: You must know that mainstream users don’t pay one bit of attention to any and all of the dumb terms Silicon Valley comes up with.

And, with all the obviously massive change that has happened in the past few years in tech and the Internet (iPhone, Kindle, Facebook, Twitter to name a few), it seems odd to say that anything has been held back.

Frankly, it would be nice if tech innovation took a breather once in a while.

Scooby Don’t wrote: Anyway, can we use year numbers to describe the Web now? It’ll make it easier to evangelize the modern world to businesses. We’re entering the 2010 Web, that’s what I’m exploring. Calling the Web a version number is for people who don’t really understand, or participate in, what’s going on here. Kara and Walt, you gotta do better here.

BoomTown wrote: What’s in a name?

Well, it’s dang easy to attack, of course, instead of actually discussing the actual premise that we were outlining in our essay, titled “Welcome to Web 3.0.”

As we wrote:

“So what’s the seminal development that’s ushering in the era of Web 3.0? It’s the real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean, simple software, against cloud-based data and services. The poster children for this new era have been the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and iPod Touch, which have sold 37 million units in less than two years and attracted 35,000 apps and one billion app downloads in just nine months.”

So, if you want to just focus on the name, then you gotta do better here.

Until then, you say 2010 Web, we say Web 3.0 and let’s call the whole thing off.

Kara Visits Offbeat Guides!

Kara Swisher — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:12:01 +0000

This week, I went on a trek to downtown San Francisco–from ATD HQ, located in the wilds of the Castro–to visit David Sifry, the jovial Web entrepreneur who recently launched Offbeat Guides.

The San Francisco-based start-up makes “personalized, up-to-date travel guides that cover over 30,000 travel destinations, using a combination of search technology and curation by both amateur and professional travel experts.”

In other words, on-demand travel books, with a touch of humanity–an obvious and even innovative trend as custom printing gets cheaper.

But Sifry is also putting the guides on digital devices, like the Kindle from Amazon (AMZN).

Sifry, who also founded the blog search engine Technorati, talked to BoomTown about the business and gave me a quick tour of its HQ near Union Square.

Here’s the video interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

Yes, BoomTown Will Overpay for Apple's Pretty Version of the Kindle (Twice!)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:00:14 +0000

Oh dear, I always forget that the camera is turned on 24/7 these days, knows all and sees all and then sticks it on YouTube.

Like this moment for me that came during a speech I gave last week at the Software & Information Industry Association’s NetGain conference in San Francisco, which was titled, “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Tweet: What Interactivity Really Means for Real Businesses.”

While I talked about a lot of key trends, from persistent data to ubiquitous screens to the importance of voice, touch and gesture in future computing to the always-on state of online presence, it was this moment in the Q&A part at the end that got most noticed.

Someone had asked me what devices I use and also wondered if I had bought a Kindle from Amazon (AMZN).

Indeed not, as you will see, as I admitted that I was waiting to overpay for any similar and doubtlessly overpriced e-reader Apple (AAPL) will foist on me someday.

Here’s the video (please ignore my itchy ear thing and haggard look):

Welcome to Lucky D7: Still Gambling on the Digital Future

Kara Swisher — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:15:55 +0000

Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.

We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”

Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.

It’s been a real winning streak since then for D, due in large part to our great speakers–such as Microsoft (MSFT) icon Bill Gates and Apple (AAPL) legend Steve Jobs.

Both have been onstage many times over the years, including a historic interview the pair of tech titans did together in 2007 at D5.

Other amazing speakers have included: Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE), Barry Diller of InterActiveCorp (IACI), legendary director George Lucas, Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (AMZN), former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman, News Corp. (NWS) head Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft head Steve Ballmer, Walt Disney (DIS) honcho Bob Iger, Bobby Kotick of Activision Blizzard (ATVI), CBS (CBS) CEO Les Moonves, Democratic and Republican pols like former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John McCain, all the leadership of Google (GOOG) and many, many more.

We have had a lot of great moments onstage with all these tech and media players over the years, to be sure, with interviews ranging from the funny to the sublime to the truly disastrous.

But, like the digital industry and the innovation our conference focuses on, we also like to lean forward to try to figure out what the Next Big Thing is around the corner, whether it comes from Silicon Valley or not.

That’s why we’re kicking off our conference on May 26 with two of the founders of Twitter–Biz Stone and Evan Williams–who are riding high on tech’s latest hot thing, which might turn out to be either a rocket ship or a shooting star.

They’ll be followed up over the next two days by a plethora of interesting players, from the leaders of several major mobile companies to content execs hit hard by fast-moving digital forces to a new Internet leader like Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz, who is trying to turn around one of the Web’s great icons from its more recent lackluster path.

And, as we always do, we will be featuring a spate of demos too, trying to see if we can unearth that next next thing.

In the past, the D stage has seen the debut of start-up products like Sling Media’s Slingbox, Aliph’s Jawbone and Pure Digital’s Flip, all of which have gone onto glory. And also some, like Palm’s Foleo, which did not.

While not everyone can attend D, our crack staff is committed to bringing all the action from this year’s conference to readers of the All Things Digital site via up-to-the-minute blogs, photos, videos, tweets, digs and more. We’ll also, as soon as we can, post the videos of each of the onstage sessions, in their entirety.

Until it all kicks off, here is the list of speakers, below, in alphabetical order, who will be appearing at 2009’s D7 conference:

Irving Azoff | CEO of Ticketmaster Entertainment (TKTM)

Mitchell Baker | Chairman of Mozilla

Steve Ballmer | CEO of Microsoft

Carol Bartz | CEO of Yahoo

Mark Cuban | Chairman of HDNet and Owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theaters and Magnolia Pictures

Eve Ensler | Playwright and Founder of V-Day

Arianna Huffington | Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo | CEO of Nokia (NOK)

Mike Lazaridis | Co-CEO of Research In Motion (RIMM)

John Lilly | CEO of Mozilla

John Malone | Chairman of Liberty Media Corporation (LCAPA)

Roger McNamee | Partner, Elevation Partners

Jon Miller | Chief Digital Officer of News Corp.

Jon Rubinstein | Executive Chairman, Palm (PALM)

Randall Stephenson | CEO of AT&T (T)

Biz Stone | Co-founder of Twitter

Owen Van Natta | CEO of MySpace

Katharine Weymouth | Publisher of the Washington Post (WPO)

Evan Williams | Co-founder and CEO of Twitter

Jeff Zucker | CEO of NBC Universal (GE)