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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 short videos, some more adorkable than others, which star the main search box.

One thing they all have in common is that they have the look and feel of a marketing campaign, with a tag line of “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 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 that 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 that, simply saying they were feeling all warm and fuzzy and so they said they 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.

Hey, Hey, Hey, Twitter! Here's the Real "What's Happening!"

Kara Swisher — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:16:52 +0000

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?”

“The fundamentally open model of Twitter created a new kind of information network and it has long outgrown the concept of personal status updates,” wrote Stone. “Twitter helps you share and discover what’s happening now among all the things, people, and events you care about. ‘What are you doing?’ isn’t the right question anymore…”

While the blogosphere covered this development 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.

Instead, it would be embodied completely by the 1970s television show, “What’s Happening!”

The sitcom was about three African-American teens living in the Watts section of Los Angeles–Raj, Rerun and Dwayne.

Here’s a video of the opening of the show, episodes of which can be found in their entirety all over the Web, and from which much Hey-Hey-Hey wisdom can be gleaned:

Sphere Leader Has Exited AOL–But Staying on as "Special" Venture Advisor

Kara Swisher — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:30:28 +0000

Tony Conrad, CEO and co-founder of Sphere–the contextually relevant content engine AOL bought in the spring of 2008 for upward of $25 million–left the Time Warner (TWX) online unit last month, several sources have told BoomTown in recent weeks.

But, in an effort by AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong to hold onto entrepreneurial talent, Conrad (pictured above) has agreed to become “Special Advisor” to its AOL Ventures Unit, headed by Jon Brod.

Conrad, who also works as a partner at San Francisco venture firm True Ventures, is also apparently looking to launch a new start-up.

These many moves have now been confirmed by a blog post–obtained by BoomTown–set to be published by Conrad at Sphere, which has recently changed its name to Surphace (a goofy moniker that still makes me weep, and not for joy).

Titled, “Next,” the post will also be appearing on the True Ventures site.

In it, Conrad outlined the changes and also gave big thanks all around.

You can read the whole thing below. In the post, Conrad noted that “I also find myself with a burning need to start another company…[and] I’ve decided that I need to move on from Sphere to figure it out.”

Sphere was founded in 2005 and raised about $4.25 million from many investors, some of which included Radar Partners, Trident Capital and well-known Web players Scott Kurnit and Will Hearst.

Conrad, who was involved with Webmail and RSS aggregator Oddpost (acquired by Yahoo in 2004), is also on the board of Automattic/WordPress, the blog publishing system this site uses.

This kind of history gives him a lot of Silicon Valley cred to help AOL, which also recently hired former Yahoo (YHOO) exec Brad Garlinghouse to run its communications arm and be its “CEO of Silicon Valley.”

Both will be working with Brod, who came to AOL via its acquisition of hyperlocal community news start-up Patch Media.

Brod has previously worked closely with Armstrong, who was a major Patch investor.

All these players will have their hands full trying to push AOL’s reputation among entrepreneurs, which is–how can I put it delicately?–pretty nonexistent.

But boosting innovation will be key to success as AOL prepares to spin off from Time Warner later in the year.

And that was not exactly helped by its recently released slate of board picks, who are a little light on fast-paced, Web 2.0 entrepreneurial skills.

So, keeping someone like Conrad in the AOL tent is a good move, especially since several similar execs at start-ups bought by the online giant have left.

They include Michael Jones of Userplane, who is now COO of News Corp. (NWS) social networking unit MySpace, as well as many others.

Here is a video interview I did with Conrad in mid-2007 (which also includes a visit with GigaOm’s Om Malik):

[ See post to watch video ]

And here is Conrad’s blog post:

Next

It’s been almost five years since Martin Remy, Steve Neiker, Toni Schneider and I started working on Sphere. For me, it’s around 10% of a life. And it’s a time when I find myself thinking a lot about a particular question: What do I want to do next?

In 2005, I had the good fortune of being on the founding team of Sphere and joining True Ventures simultaneously. I always thought that I’d eventually focus all of my attention on one or the other, but both were too much fun and I guess I’m selfish in that way. As time passed, I went deeper into each role and I never got around to choosing one or the other. It worked out nicely. True is on its second fund and Sphere had a successful sale to AOL in 2008. Most importantly, Sphere’s business and team are both thriving within AOL. While I’m proud of my contributions to both, the heroes in this equation are Martin, Steve, Toni, Shea DiDonna, Braughm Ricke, Om Malik, Puneet Agarwal, John Burke, Phil Black, Jon Callaghan, Marty Moe, Bill Wilson and AOL–they trusted and empowered me to pursue both. I am extremely grateful.

As I’ve thought through the question of what’s next, I’ve realized that I love the complementary perspectives acquired from building a company as an entrepreneur and investor. They are symbiotic roles and it’s really hard to say which has influenced me more. While my role at True as a Venture Partner will continue to deepen (because there is nothing more rewarding than working with people you admire and trust), I also find myself with a burning need to start another company. I’ve discovered my formula and doing both makes me happiest.

As for my next company, I’m not sure what the answer to that question is, but I’ve decided that I need to move on from Sphere (now Surphace) to figure it out. This may feel like old news as I’ve been working to make myself obsolete as Josh Guttman transitioned into the CEO role. My decision is easy as I know that Surphace is in excellent hands. I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving if I didn’t believe that Josh was the right leader for the business today. He’s a natural leader and has a strategy for the future that I believe is going to accelerate growth for Surphace and AOL. I couldn’t be more pleased for Josh and excited for the Surphace team.

As for my thoughts about Surphace and AOL’s future, I’m more optimistic than ever. We joined AOL at an opportune time. AOL is doing what great, sustainable businesses do every so often – they’re reinventing themselves. As the business model of the oldest and one of the biggest Internet businesses evolves, Sphere/Surphace has become an important piece of their strategy to reach across and engage the web. In the past year, we’ve had an insiders’ view into how AOL’s new leadership team has moved aggressively to engage their audience (new vertical focused websites; a focus on engagement and not page-views for page-views sake; hiring leading journalistic talent when others downsized; acquisitions in the local content space; shorter development cycles with an emphasis on release, iterate and release). There is nothing like winning and the AOL publishing business is winning. As a result, I’m pleased to also announce that I’ve agreed to serve as a Special Advisor to AOL Ventures as they reinvent themselves. I am thrilled at this opportunity to evolve my relationship.

I want to give a huge thanks to the people who’ve made the last few years what they were: my family tops the list, an entrepreneur is only as good as their support system and this is my secret sauce. My co-founders, Martin and Steve, who trusted me to play a role in helping them get the tech they invented the exposure it deserved. Toni and Phil who taught me about generosity at a moment when I was able to learn. Matt Mullenweg who opened up my thinking of how a start-up operates. Marty and Bill who have been consistently supportive since Day One–I can’t underscore enough how much I appreciate the manner in which they’ve empowered us to thrive in an appropriately independent environment. They have treated me (and the Sphere team) with enormous respect for which I am both thankful and flattered. The original Sphere team, the current Surphace team who have embraced AOL. Our investors and advisors who supported and helped shape our vision. The True team and entrepreneurs who have taught me about sacrifice, vision, execution and the value of pursuing your dreams–and, of course, Lewis Dvorkin, Kevin Lockland and Bill who paid us the nicest compliment of all in offering to acquire our company and then doing so.

It’s been a thrilling, at times difficult, always rewarding and lucky ride I’ve been on. Thanks to all.

Yahoo's Yodel Anecdotal Blogger Will Not Be Yodeling Anymore

Kara Swisher — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:49:03 +0000

While Nicki Dugan (pictured here) was not one of the top execs at Yahoo, she certainly is typical of many at the company who stuck with it through many ups and downs.

No longer, according to a memo BoomTown obtained from several sources, since the longtime PR staffer–who has been at Yahoo (YHOO) for almost a decade and who was previously with an outside public relations firm that worked for Yahoo–will leave the company Monday.

Dugan has a high-profile role at Yahoo, running its Yodel Anecdotal corporate blog and penning most of the pieces on it.

It’s not clear from the memo where Dugan is headed, though the memo is full of interesting “moments” she had while at Yahoo and includes some nice historical details (including a scoop I had from Web 1.0 that I had long forgotten).

Here’s the email she sent to colleagues:

From: Nicki Dugan
To: XXX
Cc: Nicki Dugan
Sent: Thu Oct 29 16:35:22 2009
Subject: Fare thee well

Hiya:

After almost exactly 9.5 years, 10 Oktoberfest mugs, 9 founder holiday gifts, 4 cube moves, and 76 daily miles, I’ve decided to hang up my purple badge. Saying goodbye to Yahoo!–and all of you–is no easy task. It’s a rare place that can capture your heart and soul and hang onto it for about a quarter of your life. What’s made Yahoo! so special? I thought I’d rattle off some of my favorite moments:

* Jerry asking me (on my first day) if the PR team really needed another person

* Filo’s all-worldwide “get back to work” Yahoo! Greeting during my first week

* Yahoo! Surfers. Full stop.

* Risking life and limb to cross the street for a meeting when our HQ was on Kifer Road in Santa Clara

* My first earthquake, experienced working on a Saturday in Building D

* When our various business units were called “pods” (communications, communities, commerce, content)

* Our former general counsel propping his cowboy boots up on the conference table during a USA Today interview

* When Jerry and David taught Madeleine Albright how to surf the Web

* When In & Out Burger trucks provided meals during summer picnics

* Launching the world’s first Internet taxi

* When NASDAQ halted YHOO trading after Jim Hu and Kara Swisher caught wind of our Broadcast.com acquisition

* “Sleeping” under my desk the night before Analyst Day 2001 as lawyers and the deal team haggled sentence structure with SBC in our joint release

* When the cow from our lobby attracted Mennonites at NYC’s South Street Seaport

* Terry Semel doing earnings calls in his socks

* Being the stage photographer for Beck at Open Hack Day 2006

* Getting Jerry & David to sumo wrestle in the name of fighting climate change (http://bit.ly/2NIjkO)

* Tom Cruise recreating the Oprah coach moment during his Yahoo! Influentials visit

* Convincing Matt Dillon that our contract trumped his hangover at the Greenest City in America press conference in Times Square

* Flying to Burbank via a NetJet with every C-level Yahoo! executive for the Overture acquisition

* When Sue Decker rode into an all-hands at URLs on a Harley Davidson

* Meeting Al Gore at a private “An Inconvenient Truth” screening with the Yahoo! For Good team

* Breaking the world record for largest simultaneous yodel…and getting ordinary Americans to yodel their hearts out in NYC, SF and Seattle for the Yodel Challenge and Yodel Studio

* Watching mobs of Yahoo! users line up outside Baskin-Robbins stores across the country for free ice cream on our 10th anniversary

* Having Michael Arrington leave the third comment on Yodel Anecdotal when we launched (and a positive one at that!) (http://bit.ly/1Lvzrx)

* The emotional weekend spent at Skadden as we prepared to announce Terry’s resignation

* Learning how to play Faceball at Flickr HQ (http://bit.ly/4mdJ24)

* Getting Blake Jorgensen to pull off the best April Fool’s video… Evar

* Stuffing cotton into Filo’s cheeks for his cinematic debut as Don Corleone in Ari’s tech team video

* Asking Ash to dress in an orange jumpsuit to pick up trash in Filo’s cube (I’ve clearly abused Filo extensively)

* Dressing in black and leaving rubber duckies all over Google’s campus at dawn (10K+ photo views! http://bit.ly/vX8hA)

* Convincing 33 Yahoo! teams to dance with Matt “Where the Hell is Matt?” Harding all over our HQ during the Summer of Microsoft (http://bit.ly/929hT)

* Getting the Food Network to produce a “Dinner: Impossible” episode for Yahoo!’s Search’s anniversary and watching Chef Robert Irvine abuse Tuoc and Raj in the kitchen (http://bit.ly/291zsB)

* Carol’s first all-hands F-bomb

We played hard, worked harder, and drank copious amounts of purple Koolaid. And I’ll probably never quite get it out of my system. Working here through so many of Yahoo!’s phases has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’m so grateful for the memories and friendships built over these many years. I look forward to watching the ‘hoo from afar.

If we don’t connect on Monday for a final farewell, please keep in touch. Employee #370 (adjusted hire), over and out.

–Nicki

Here’s a link to one of my favorite blogs by Dugan, which she referenced above, on dancer Matt Harding, with a video below she did by dragging him to do jigs all over Yahoo:

[ See post to watch video ]

Beware Google: Bing Is Going to Suck Your Blood, Um, Market Share: The New Commercial

Kara Swisher — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:28:10 +0000

Here is a funny but decidedly creepy new commercial from Microsoft (MSFT), in its ongoing marketing campaign to push its Bing search service.

In the commercial, below, titled “Vampire Decision Engine,” the software giant taps into vampire mania, playing into Halloween and the next chapter in the “Twilight” movie series, “New Moon,” set to debut in November.

In it, an Edward Cullen type, aided by a comely young woman, is looking for a place to “eat.”

According to Bing’s blog, it’s one of a new series of television spots in its $100 million marketing campaign.

The creative is different from earlier commercials, which featured search-overloaded people spouting keywords.

“Our latest Bing advertisement is the first in a series of new commercials where we highlight specific ways Bing can help simplify your life and help you make decisions faster,” said Bing in its blog.

You can see more video on Bing’s YouTube channel, owned by, yep, Google (GOOG)!

Yahoo Sorry About Lap Dancers at Hack Day in Taiwan–So What's the Excuse for Last Year's Go-Go Girls?

Kara Swisher — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:37:01 +0000

One word: Shameful.

So, no surprise that Yahoo (YHOO), which is trying mightily to burnish its image worldwide, quickly apologized for the presence of women lap dancers onstage at its Open Hack Day in Taiwan last weekend.

In a post on its Yahoo Developer Network blog tonight, titled “Sorry,” YDN head Chris Yeh wrote:

All,

I wanted to acknowledge the public reaction generated by the images of female dancers at our Taiwan Open Hack Day this past weekend. Our hack events are designed to give developers an opportunity to learn about our APIs and technologies. As many folks have rightly pointed out, the “Hack Girls” aspect of our Taiwan Hack Day is not reflective of that spirit or purpose. And it’s certainly not the message we want to send about our values here at Yahoo!. Hack Days are about making everyone feel welcome, including women coders and technologists.

This incident is regrettable and we apologize to anyone that we have offended. Rest assured, it won’t happen again.

Best,
Chris Yeh
Head of YDN
twitter: @ydn
email: cyeh at yahoo-inc dot com

Ironically, in a post listing the winners and details of of the Open Hack event, at which Yahoo invited outside developers to brainstorm, Yahoo’s Erik Eldridge noted earlier today (italics are mine):

“This was our second visit to Taiwan, and we were really looking forward to coming back to see the passionate Taiwanese developers.”

Ouch. Worse still, top Yahoo execs–such as Taiwan CTO Joy Chan, Asia head Rose Tsou and Chief Technologist Sam Pullara, all pictured here with another Yahoo exec, Peter Lin–were in attendance at the event, although it is not clear if any of them attended the lap dance performance. (Yahoo PR is checking on that now for me.)

Like the image above, here are some more pictures of the lap dancers from a Flickr video, posted here, which has since been made private (click on the images to make them, um, larger):

And, rut-roh, here is a link to some more, even shorter-skirted photos on Flickr.

But, perhaps worst of all, this kind of thing is not new for Yahoo’s hack events in Taiwan, at least, where there seems to be some history of this sort of Pussycat-Dolls-meets-geeks tone.

It is not clear why all the thumpa-thumpa music and dancing gals did not engender complaints last year, although I am guessing the nerd lap action sent over the top.

In any case, here are four videos from the event in 2008 of even more gyrating ladies, which you can contrast with a video from Yahoo’s New York event on Oct. 12 of this year.

UPDATE: The videos have been suddenly made private by the person who posted them since I posted them last night, as they now say when you click them. They are not searchable or available any longer on YouTube. But you can see the situation from the images on the videos.

(If you want to know what a lap dance is, by the way, try Yahoo Answers!)

VMware Forks Over $420 Million for SpringSource (Plus the Press Release, Etc.)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:22:54 +0000

It’s certainly acquisition fever in Silicon Valley today.

After it was announced that that social networking giant Facebook had bought online content sharing start-up FriendFeed, now comes the news that VMware has purchased SpringSource, a privately held enterprise and Web application development and management cloud computing start-up.

The price? That would be $420 million in cash and stock.

While the blogosphere–including BoomTown–will inevitably find the FaceFeed deal more riveting, this one is obviously more important.

With the purchase of San Mateo, Ca.-based SpringSource, Palo Alto, Calif.-based, VMware–which is a top player in the virtualization space–is adding to its cloud-computing application-management strength and its ties to the open-source community.

Said VMware in a press release about the five-year-old SpringSource buy:

“VMware will acquire SpringSource for approximately $362 million in cash and equity plus the assumption of approximately $58 million of unvested stock and options. The acquisition has been approved by SpringSource’s stockholders and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2009, subject to customary closing conditions.”

Here’s the full press release from VMware (plus, here is a link to a blog post by SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson:

VMware to Acquire SpringSource

Company Adds Modern Application Platform to Cloud Infrastructure Strategy

PALO ALTO, Calif., August 10, 2009–VMware, Inc., (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced a major step forward in its journey to help simplify IT by entering into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held SpringSource, a leader in enterprise and web application development and management. VMware and SpringSource plan to deliver compelling new solutions that enable companies to more efficiently build, run and manage applications within both internal and external cloud architectures.

“Today’s modern computing environments are moving to an application and data-centric world powered by state of the art virtualized and cloud computing platforms,” said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer, VMware. “The combination of SpringSource and VMware capitalizes on this shift and places us right at the intersection of the most important forces in the software market today–virtualization, modern application frameworks and cloud computing.”

VMware will acquire SpringSource for approximately $362 million in cash and equity plus the assumption of approximately $58 million of unvested stock and options. The acquisition has been approved by SpringSource’s stockholders and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2009, subject to customary closing conditions.

SpringSource is the innovator and driving force behind some of the most popular and fastest growing open source developer communities, application frameworks, runtimes, and management tools. In just five years, SpringSource has established a presence in a majority of the Global 2000 companies, and is rapidly delivering a new generation of commercial products and services. VMware plans to continue to support the principles that have made SpringSource solutions popular: the interoperability of SpringSource software with a wide variety of middleware software, and the open source model that is important to the developer community.

Together, VMware and SpringSource plan to further innovate and develop integrated Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions that can be hosted at customer datacenters or at cloud service providers. These solutions will allow customers to rapidly build new enterprise and web applications and run and manage these applications in the same dynamic, scalable and cost-efficient vSphere-based internal or external clouds that can also host and manage their existing applications, providing an evolutionary path to the future. Forrester Research expects the emerging and rapidly growing PaaS market to expand to $15B by 2016. (Platform-As-A-Service Market Sizing, July 13, 2009)

“VMware has led the modernization of datacenter infrastructures through innovative virtualization and cloud architectures, providing customers with cost savings, agility and choice,” said Rod Johnson, chief executive officer, SpringSource. “The SpringSource team and community are committed to revolutionizing the way companies build, run and manage applications. By combining forces, I’m confident that we’ll be able to deliver a set of truly remarkable solutions that dramatically simplify enterprise IT.”

Background on SpringSource

SpringSource is at the forefront of “lean software,” a concept that is being rapidly adopted by enterprises focused on dramatically cutting cost and complexity, increasing productivity, and accelerating the delivery of high-quality, business-critical applications. SpringSource’s offerings and their underlying open-source technologies are uniquely able to address a wide range of corporate, web and commercial applications through a dynamic, yet consistent architecture. SpringSource counts a majority of the Global 2000 as current customers, and has a rapidly growing business delivering support, training and commercial software based on the well-known open source technologies and communities led by SpringSource:

The Spring Framework is the leading enterprise Java programming model; currently supporting half of all enterprise Java projects and used by approximately two million developers worldwide. The Spring Framework provides a high productivity, lightweight programming environment that makes applications portable across open source and commercial application server environments from IBM, Oracle and others.

Apache Tomcat is the world’s most widely used Java application server, deployed at more than 60% of all organizations running Java server applications. SpringSource is the key contributor to and maintainer of Tomcat and is responsible for more than 95% of the bug fixes over the past two years.

SpringSource leads Groovy and Grails, a rapidly growing dynamic language and Web application framework, each with more than 70,000 downloads per month. Together, Groovy and Grails deliver the rapid application productivity of Ruby on Rails for web applications, while maintaining skill-set and infrastructure compatibility with Java Virtual Machine (JVM) environments.

With more than 3,500 deployments worldwide, SpringSource’s Hyperic application monitoring and management tools are recognized as among the leading open source offerings in the space. In March, SpringSource/Hyperic was named one of Gartner’s “Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing Management and Professional Services.”

Facebook Acquires Not-Twitter, Oops, FriendFeed (Plus the Full Press Release and More)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:26:16 +0000

Facebook said today it is acquiring FriendFeed, the online content-sharing site.

It is a logical fit for the huge social networking site, which has lagged behind microblogging kingpin Twitter in the real-time news, search and status game of perception in Silicon Valley.

Mountain View, Calif.-based FriendFeed has also trailed well behind Twitter, despite its top-notch pedigree of ex-Google (GOOG) staffers, such as Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor. The other ex-Google co-founders of FriendFeed are Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh.

Benchmark Capital and angel investors had put about $5 million into the start-up, which had been a darling among the digerati.

Despite that, the start-up only broke one million unique visitors recently, according to several reports, while San Francisco-based Twitter was reported to have upward of 44 million in June.

But FriendFeed will surely get a turbocharge from its Facebook ownership, especially as its technology is fed to its 250 million users.

While Facebook–which is based in Palo Alto, Calif.–has added some of the same functionality that FriendFeed has innovated into its famous News Feed, it will surely get its own boost from adding FriendFeed’s dozen employees, 11 of whom are engineers.

Terms were not disclosed, but the purchase price is likely well under the $500 million Facebook offered Twitter last fall.

In fact, sources estimate to me that the price was about $50 million in cash and stock for the company, which was founded in 2007.

It is also unclear what will happen to the standalone FriendFeed service in the long run, although Taylor said in an uber-cute blog post (see below) that it would remain intact for now.

This move, although prominently unmentioned by Facebook in its full press release below, is most certainly a shot across Twitter’s bow.

Here’s the official word from Facebook, as well as that blog post by FriendFeed’s Taylor about the acquisition:

Facebook Agrees to Acquire Sharing Service FriendFeed

PALO ALTO, CALIF.–August 10, 2009–Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founder. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.”

FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request

We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle…

The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We’ve always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook’s passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online.

What does this mean for my FriendFeed account?

FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team. As usual, we will communicate openly about our plans as they develop–keep an eye on the FriendFeed News group for updates.

What about the FriendFeed API?

The FriendFeed API will also continue to operate normally. As above, we will let you know as we settle on our plan to more fully integrate with Facebook.

Check out the official press release for more information.

Mark Cuban Makes the Best Point of All About Charging for Content: Use Your Imagination!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:17:53 +0000

Yesterday–in a somewhat rambling but also riveting blog post about charging for content–serial entrepreneur and perennial gadfly Mark Cuban made a very important point that execs at every large media company should take to heart as they try to cope with the digital challenge.

Use your noggins, why dontcha?

Cuban aimed the piece at News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch, who has been the most vocal media mogul of late about the issue of getting paid online for the copious amount of original content the various parts of the media giant he runs make.

(Such as this site, which is owned by Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp.)

“Rupert, you didn’t ask my opinion on this, but since when has that ever stopped me,” wrote Cuban in his post titled “My Advice to Fox & MySpace on Selling Content–Yes You Can.” “First the good news. You can sell content on the internet. People pay for content on and off the internet every second of every day. It’s easy to do. If you do it right.”

Then, Cuban followed up with a long series of suggestions–in general, Cuban had more interesting ideas in one post than I have collectively heard in a while.

Like all good brainstorms, some are defensive moves, some offensive, some very interesting and some probably unworkable.

But, in this time of massive change, all are well worth considering because Cuban’s piece had the feel of throwing a whole bunch of ideas on the table and just knocking anything around–with the goal of creating a more important sense of discovery and entrepreneurialism.

It’s kind of like that great scene in the movie, “Apollo 13,” when the engineers had to come up with a solution for a dire problem, so they threw a pile of doodads on the table and started tinkering fast.

I dearly hope that is precisely what’s going on inside all the various media companies as they seek to maneuver the storm-tossed seas of change they find themselves in instead of the more typical inclination to throw blame in a time of crisis.

The problem, as it always turns out, is that industries in trouble always tend to shoot down ideas as they arise rather than embrace even the truly insane ones–one of which might turn out to be the innovation needed.

As Cuban correctly pointed out, that is often due to infighting at big corporations.

To the negative, I saw that up close and personal a half-dozen years ago as AOL was systematically dismembered at Time Warner (TWX), due to very real wounds from the disastrous merger, at the exact moment when everyone should have been pulling for it.

To the positive, it is clear that the many failings of Microsoft (MSFT) in the search game were what finally got it to take a greenfields approach with its recently announced Bing, which is finally a competitive product.

I like that kind of gumption, and it was nice to see that in just one blog post Cuban could come up with at least 10 ideas, many of which would doubtlessly not fly.

In fact, after one, Cuban wrote: “I don’t know if it will work, but it is sure worth exploring!”

It sure is.

Here is that clip from “Apollo 13,” as well as the full video of the interview Walt Mossberg and I did with the voluble Cuban on the issues facing media giants at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference in May:

Apollo 13

Cuban at D7

[ See post to watch video ]

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

Kara Swisher — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:17:56 +0000

This morning, in a blog post titled “The Adventure Continues,” 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 yesterday.

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.

Considering all the fail whales, the stolen documents and now this, I would have to say we have now taken Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL’s title as Internet company most likely to experience technical difficulties. Do not adjust your screens! Please stand by!

Biz wrote: In the past 24 hours, we’ve been contending with a variety of attacks that continue to change in nature and intensity. We’re working to restore access to apps built on the Twitter platform that were affected by defensive measures–there was some overcompensation on our part as we tune our system to deal with this scale of attack.

Translation: We’d like to blame this one on TechCrunch somehow, and are hard at work on another impolitic internal memo about how to do so that also manages to insult potential acquirers, such as Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), and our investors.

The reason we doused this crisis with extra amounts of weed killer is because no one will be able to accuse us of sitting by in our usual chill manner, which is exemplified by the official Twitter company motto: “Scoble dude, relax, it’s only 140 characters.”

Biz wrote: The ongoing, massively coordinated attacks on Twitter this week appear to have been geopolitical in motivation. However, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to engage in speculative discussion about these motivations. The open exchange of information can have a positive impact globally and our job is to keep Twitter services running reliably to the best of our ability.

Translation: And if blaming TechCrunch does not work, there is always Iran to point the finger at!

However, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to engage in speculative discussion of these motivations–mostly because it will just piss off the hackers more and they will crush our little technical operation like it is papier maché.

Which, let’s be honest, it is. Anybody got any spare Elmer’s Glue?

Biz wrote: As a reminder, no data or personal information of any kind has been compromised. Denial of Service attacks are a known quantity on the web and they are not going away any time soon. Nevertheless, we can and will improve system response to these assaults such that they don’t interfere with our normal, everyday Twittering.

Translation: No data or personal information of any kind have been compromised, except–of course–for Ashton Kuchter’s.

But, to be fair, that dude overshares like Perez and Paris Hilton combined and on steroids.

Not that we mind him tweeting pictures of his wife’s posterior, but he makes John Mayer seem shy.

Denial-of-service attacks are a known quantity on the Web, much the way our fail whale is.

Nevertheless, we can and will fail again, so there will be yet another spate of articles and blog posts about the indignity of life without Twittering to show just how indispensable we are.

R.I.P. Director John Hughes: Anyone? Anyone? Aaaannnyone Not Completely Bummed?

Kara Swisher — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:44:00 +0000

While John Hughes has almost nothing to do with the Internet, BoomTown–who is of a certain age–was saddened to hear about the premature passing of this director supreme of suburban teen angst movies of the 1980s.

He died yesterday of a heart attack at 59 years old.

His hit films included “The Breakfast Club,” “Sixteen Candles” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” He wrote “The Breakfast Club” and “Sixteen Candles,” as well as “Pretty in Pink,” “Home Alone,” “Some Kind of Wonderful” (I heart Watts) and tons of others.

In other words, the creator of the infamous “Brat Pack.”

Here are two movie clips to enjoy on this slooooow Friday in August, from Hulu, and a terrific montage video from YouTube, which make me feel–almost–young again.

And here is a link to a fascinating blog post about someone who, oddly enough, was Hughes’s pen pal.

The Breakfast Club:

Sixteen Candles:

Hughes Montage:

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz's Letter About the YaSoft Deal

Kara Swisher — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:11:38 +0000

Here is Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz’s letter to the Yahoo “fans,” which appeared on the company’s blog this morning, about the just announced search and online advertising deal with Microsoft (MSFT).

Main messages: Better! Google (GOOG) is a lopsided monster! Microsoft is a frenemy!

And, mostest of all: WOW!

Bartz, like BoomTown, was up early:

What our Microsoft deal means to you

Posted July 29th, 2009 at 4:55 am by Carol Bartz, CEO

It’s inhumanly early in California, but it’s already a great day at Yahoo!. We’ve just signed a major search deal with Microsoft. Under the terms, Microsoft will become the search engine behind Yahoo! and we will become the worldwide exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

While you’ll read a lot about why this is good for our business and for advertisers, I want to talk about what’s in it for you–the Yahoo! fan.

Here’s the rundown:

Better search: You’ll still find search boxes all across Yahoo!, but this deal will make the difference between a great Yahoo! search experience and an awesome one. Some of the biggest brains in the business work on Yahoo! Search, and they will continue to innovate to create a better search experience on Yahoo!. As a result of the deal, Microsoft, which has great technologists and deep pockets,will have the scale to bring users faster, more useful and more personally relevant search.

Better everything else: With Microsoft powering Yahoo! Search, we’ll be able to focus on the things we do best–being the center of people’s lives online with properties like our homepage, mail, finance, news, sports, entertainment, mobile, etc. Sure, we’re the world’s largest online media company and your loyalty has made that possible. But we’re not satisfied–we still want you to say “wow” a lot more often. And that’s what makes this deal especially exciting.

Better competition: Competition equals innovation. But with one player dominating 70% of search, that field has been pretty lopsided. This transaction will create a healthy competitor that’ll keep everyone on their toes.

In short, everything’s just going to get a whole lot better for you.

And one final note–what this agreement does not cover is any of Yahoo!’s other properties or products. In those areas, Microsoft can expect a fierce competitor.

We’ve set up a special site, www.choicevalueinnovation.com, that answers your questions.

Carol Bartz
CEO

Yahoo Confirms Xoopit Purchase

Kara Swisher — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:44:57 +0000

Yahoo confirmed the news–first reported by BoomTown and in The Wall Street Journal last night–that it was buying Xoopit, the San Francisco-based social email company.

And it did so in both a blog post and on Twitter, as you can see here:

@karaswisher @jvascellaro Your scoops confirmed http://bit.ly/gpOT2

Well, thanks! But we are already onto new scoops, so try to keep up!

The price for the acquisition, which Yahoo (YHOO) did not reveal, was about $20 million, according to sources.

In its blog post, titled “Xoopit + Yahoo! Mail = Moving beyond that massive digital shoebox,” Yahoo’s SVP of Application Products Bryan Lamkin wrote, in part:

With the integration of Xoopit’s platform technology and capabilities, the task of sending photos via email will be as easy as it should be and sharing photo albums with friends and family members will also be a cinch. You’ll be able to share your pictures among a group of friends or family like never before–combining pictures from numerous sources into a single album for a private group to view. And soon your inbox will become an organized photo index as well. Just imagine having a tool that collects all the photos you’ve sent and received over the years into that scrapbook you’ve never had time to assemble.

In short, Xoopit will bring phenomenal photo organization, improved photo sharing, and the serendipity of discovering forgotten photos to Yahoo! Mail.

Why is this such a big deal? Yahoo! Mail is actually home to one of the largest online photo repositories in the world. And every day, millions of you use Yahoo! Mail as your primary way to share the photos of important moments in your lives. While social networks and community sites are great for sharing photos with everyone you know, we realize it’s not for everyone or every occasion. For many, email is still best for sharing photos among a more select group of friends or family. And now we’re making it all that much easier for you.

Xoopit finds photos, videos, links and other files in email so that users can surface and then share them on many sites, such as social networking giant Facebook. It also has other products that essentially enliven email.

Xoopit’s investors–Accel Partners and Foundation Capital, along with several angel investors–have pumped about $6.5 million into the company since 2006.

As I previously reported, sources said Yahoo was first impressed with its innovative plug-in that works with Gmail from Google (GOOG), and has been looking at the company for a while, previously offering about $10 million for it.

Xoopit also makes a similar photo-sharing application for Yahoo Mail, which it launched late last year.

The opening up of its popular email product to a variety of third-party applications in order to make it more robust has been a goal of Yahoo recently as it seeks to socialize one of its most popular products.

Interestingly, in the Yahoo blog, Lamkin said Xoopit was Yahoo Mail’s most popular third-party app.

Here is a screen shot of Xoopit in action in Yahoo’s email offering (click on the image to make it larger):

Former AOLer Jim Bankoff Scores $7 Million for Sports News and Community Start-Up

Kara Swisher — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 22:51:37 +0000

Jim Bankoff–the well-regarded former AOL exec who runs an online sports news network called SB Nation–has nabbed $7 million in funding from investors to grow the company, including Comcast Interactive Capital, said sources.

There was also a Securities and Exchange Commission document filed on the transaction today, under the name Sportsblogs Inc., which you can see here.

The SEC filing noted that the money invested was $7.95 million. But sources said that the nearly million-dollar difference is for giving cash to early employees and founders and will not be used to fund SB Nation.

People familiar with the situation said SB Nation’s post-investment valuation, after this second round, will be $30 million and also include previous investors, such as Accel Partners and Allen & Co.

Its first round–which also included several prominent angel investors, such as former AOL exec Ted Leonsis and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner–was $5 million.

SB Nation has used that investment to grow like gangbusters over the last year, especially since Bankoff arrived last fall as its chairman and CEO.

Depending on which survey service you reference, the site has between four and seven million unique visitors a month.

It has done distribution deals with Internet giants like Yahoo (YHOO) to goose that growth.

While it has been around since 2003, founded by DailyKos’s Markos Moulitsas and others, the Washington, D.C.-based start-up has been aiming more at the sweet spot of local sports pages, especially as newspapers have become weaker.

SB Nation also covers national sports, using a community network of blogs, analysis and news.

Comcast Interactive Capital, which is the venture arm of Comcast (CMCSA), will also get a board seat for David Zilberman.

Bankoff (pictured here) was a longtime AOL exec, ultimately in charge of programming and products there. He worked on such products as TMZ.com, Moviefone, MapQuest and Netscape, as well as its AIM and ICQ messaging offerings.

After he left the Time Warner (TWX) online unit, he became a senior adviser to Providence Equity Partners. Bankoff still has that role, but has been working full-time at SB Nation for a year.

Digital Musical Chairs at MySpace and FIM Still Going–Exec Departures and More…

Kara Swisher — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:23:00 +0000

As BoomTown previously reported, there have been a lot of exec moves at Fox Interactive Media and its MySpace unit, which seem to be continuing.

Especially departures, it seems, as the massive restructuring of the digital units of News Corp. (NWS) keeps shaking out.

Top engineer Max Engel (pictured here), who ran the social networking site’s open initiatives, for example, is leaving to join the new stealth start-up being helmed by ex-MySpace employees, including former COO Amit Kapur.

In a blog post on his Web site yesterday, titled “Farewell, MySpace…,” Engel did not say where he was headed, but noted:

“While MySpace presented opportunities through their scale and reach, I’ve spent the past 3 years at large companies, and now I’m ready to go small and give the startup life a try.”

In addition, while I was poking around on this story, sources also told me that there are more higher-level departures in the works, including those whom the new team of execs at Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace had kept in place, despite a recent round of layoffs.

Those execs include Tom Andrus (pictured here), who was a key product exec in the last regime at MySpace, sources said, but is poised to go. His former charge was as SVP of product management under MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson.

While Anderson remains at MySpace, his role has been changed and product is now headed by Jason Hirschhorn, and Andrus reportedly decided recently that he did not want to stay at the company in a lesser role.

Andrus is also listed as a developer at Gray Ghost Ventures on LinkedIn.

In the longer term, sources said it is also likely that once he completes the work to downsize MySpace’s international operations–which were cut drastically–its head, Travis Katz (pictured here), will move on in the fall.

While some thought he would leave during MySpace’s international layoffs several weeks ago, he did not, given all the work involved in closing down a lot of operations there after 67 percent the staff abroad was cut.

Katz, sources said, is preparing to move to California in the next several weeks and is interested in working for a start-up, after many years at News Corp.

Lastly, on the goodbye train, is MySpace Music’s SVP Strategy and Global Marketing, Jamie Kantrowitz (pictured here).

She had previously worked as a top exec in MySpace’s international business.

Not everyone is bidding adieu, though, although they are moving chairs.

Dan Fawcett (pictured here), president of Fox Digital Media, is likely to be moving to work with News Corp. digital head Jon Miller as his general counsel and right-hand man at the Fox Interactive Media division.

The former GC, Mike Angus, has moved to FIM’s Fox Audience Network, run by Adam Bain.

FIM, of course, is being rejiggered into a new smaller unit, as I previously reported, and is likely to be renamed simply the Digital Media Group.

(Full disclosure: FIM is owned by News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones–owner of this site.)