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Friday, November 20, 2009

Hey, Hey, Hey, Twitter! Here’s the Real “What’s Happening!”

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

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

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

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

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

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

Here is an adorkable video about it with LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Twitter’s Biz Stone.

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Monday, September 28, 2009

Twitter Investors Celebrate: The Paparazzi Proof!

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Well, it’s not like Twitter’s investors are Britney Spears or anything, but somehow, the $1 billion valuation of Twitter deserves a BoomTown all-lenses-shooting response.

Thus, the crack team at All Things Digital went all out in trying to capture one such investor in his true state.

Click in to see photographic proof!

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Friday, September 4, 2009

If Some Dad’s Rants on Twitter Can Go Viral, My Mom Needs to Turbo-Tweet

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Oh, dear; now my mom is going to be really pissed at me for not making her a Twitter sensation.

Unlike Justin Halpern–who has been tweeting wacky quips uttered by his dad without him knowing much about it, under the handle: @s—mydadsays.

And, lo and behold, with only 28 tweets, the cranky 73-year-old has attracted almost 250,000 followers.

My brother and I did the same for my mom this summer, but obviously have to step up our game pronto.

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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

“Get-Out-of-Our” Biz Stone Talks Twitter Attacks on “Tavis Smiley”

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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone can be seen tomorrow night in an interview with Tavis Smiley on his PBS show, talking about the denial-of-service attacks on the hot microblogging service recently.

In the interview, noting that Twitter had spent 2008 scaling up its platform to deal with its exploding popularity, Stone said the San Francisco-based start-up was now trying to get up to speed on malicious attackers.

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Monday, August 10, 2009

Boys Will Be–Especially, in Silicon Valley–Boys: Some Goofy Photos Après FaceFeed

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Yes, that’s Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in shorts, knees and all, in a picture taken right “after signing the papers” to acquire FriendFeed for $50 million. The deal was announced today.

One of FriendFeed’s founders, Paul Buchheit, posted them on his account at the online content-sharing site.

They look like they were taken at night in someone’s driveway in Silicon Valley (nice fence!).

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Friday, August 7, 2009

BoomTown Decodes Twitter’s Denial-of-Service Blog Post (So You Don’t Have To)

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This morning, in a blog post, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone gave more of an explanation for the outage that the microblogging service endured due to a denial-of-service attack.

Fortunately, BoomTown can read between the lines in order to decipher the secret message herein!

Biz wrote: The Adventure Continues.

Translation: By “adventure,” I mean yet-another-friggin’-Twitter-birdie-crisis.

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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

The New Twitter Homepage Is, as Reported, Search-alicious!

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BoomTown reported last week that Twitter was planning on debuting a new homepage this week.

And presto–it’s up!

The new page is heavy on search, as well as topic trends.

I am not sure this makes the site a “Google-killer,” as some have predicted, with Twitter dominating real-time search over Google.

But the blue is a very pretty shade, although I still want the microblogging service to 86 that annoying Twitter bird (alert PETA stat!).

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Thursday, July 23, 2009

Exclusive: Twitter to Debut a New Main Homepage Next Week

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Twitter will unveil a new main homepage next week at Twitter.com, said co-founder Biz Stone, in order “to better show who we are.”

In an interview with BoomTown this afternoon, Stone said the current page is essentially confusing to the masses of people who come to it, made aware of the microblogging service by the massive media hype it has received over the last year.

People arriving at the new main homepage will be greeted by a search box, information on Twitter trends and a panoply of more specific information about how they can use Twitter.

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Liveblogging Fortune Brainstorm Tech: Twitter Co-Founder “Yes-There-Is-A” Biz Stone

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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone took the stage at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference late this afternoon and was greeted by that old chestnut:

When is Twitter going to make some simoleons?

Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky posted a poll about that and a few other topics, and then asked a question he said was on the minds of many in Silicon Valley:

“Why the hell aren’t you guys making money?”

Here’s what Stone had to say.

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Monday, June 15, 2009

Kara Tours the New Facebook HQ (and Gets Ripped): The Uncut Video!

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Last week, in anticipation of Facebook’s Press Open House tonight for its spanking new HQ in Palo Alto, Calif., BoomTown hightailed it down there for an early look-see at what the social-networking site is doing with all that dough it collected from Microsoft and the Russians.

Moving into a new crib, for one thing!

I got an extra-special tour of the new 150,000-square-foot building, which brings more than 900 employees together at last, by Facebook’s long-suffering–mostly due to my being annoying, I know!–PR honcho, Brandee Barker.

So, much like the tour I did recently with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone of its San Francisco HQ, here is a video of Facebook’s new digs.

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Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Twitter Co-Founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams: The Full D7 Interview

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As promised, we kick off posting the full sessions of the seventh D: All Things Digital conference with the interview that Walt Mossberg and I did onstage with two of the three founders of the hot microblogging service Twitter, Biz Stone and Evan Williams.

Our selection of the pair as the first interview was due to the enormous attention and, yes, hype, the San Francisco-based start-up has received of late. Along with a massive funding and a frothy valuation, Twitter has also attracted the acquisition attention of Web giants like Google and Microsoft.

And there is no question–thanks be to Oprah!–they’ve become the latest It boys of Silicon Valley.

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Monday, June 8, 2009

Coming to a Web Site Near You (This One): The Entire D7 Interview and Demo Sessions

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Tomorrow, just two weeks after it took place, All Things Digital will start posting the full sessions of the recent seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

We could not accommodate everyone who wanted to come in person, so you have already lost the opportunity to annoy major tech and media moguls and my mother all in one place (although Mission Accomplished! for BoomTown), but will be able to see all the content onstage here, in its entirety, on ATD, in the exact order we put on the show at the conference.

As a primer, here’s News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and singer Jill Sobule opening the show.

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Friday, June 5, 2009

Twitter’s a Big Baby! Apple iPhone’s AT&T Problem! MySpace’s Blues! No One’s Gonna Pay for This Blog! Poll-Crazy at D7

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Hey, politicians aren’t the only ones who get to do fancy polls!

Walt and I had a bunch of them about a variety of tech topics that we pulled out to ambush, ooops, pose to speakers at our seventh D: All Things Digital conference last week, which we commissioned from Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates.

Check our our lovely graphs here.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009

In Case You Missed It, Here’s the Print Version of D7, Um, Online!

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Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal did a special Technology Report section, made up of excerpts of selected interviews from the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ringing in Bing and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz looking for the primo opportunity to curse at BoomTown.

Here are the online links to the transcripts, as well as video highlights.

We’ll be posting the full video of all the sessions on this site soon.

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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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