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Thursday, August 13, 2009

Girls in Tech “Journalism 2.0″ Panel: Speak Loudly and Carry a Big Stick

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Last night, BoomTown moderated a really interesting panel for an organization called Girls in Tech, titled “Journalism 2.0 RoundTable.”

Girls in Tech describes itself as a “social network enterprise focused on the engagement, education and empowerment of like-minded, professional, intelligent & influential women.”

With those lofty requirements–combined with the fact that I was a girl when we had yet to land on the moon–I have no idea what I was doing there.

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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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Friday, March 13, 2009

If “Oprah”-Approved Zuckerberg Can’t Buy Twitter, Co-Opting It Is the Next Best Thing!

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Fresh from his puppy dog-esque “Oprah” interview, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made good use of the press the talk show appearance engendered to hawk his wares, most especially new features the hot social-networking site has been coming out with of late.

Including some that look suspiciously like Twitter, which declined an acquisition offer from Facebook last year.

But what tool did the ever-clever Zuckerberg also use yesterday to flack his products?

Twitter, of course!

Here is his tweet in question and also a snippet of his appearance with Oprah too.

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Friday, November 7, 2008

The MySpace Music Party: The No Lionel Richie/They Still Won’t Stop Believin’ Edition

Let’s get this out of the way: BoomTown completely missed Lionel Richie perform, cooling our heels outside behind the rope line at the MySpace party in San Francisco last night.

Major bummer.

That aside, I did finally get in and did a video at the rocking event, which the SoCal-based social-networking site threw after the day’s proceedings at the Web 2.0 Summit.

It was the scene of a lot of wild partying, with a lot of swinging and packed most of the night, even as the supposed gloom of the econalypse was settling over Silicon Valley.

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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Kara Visits Burda’s DLD Luncheon in Silicon Valley!

Germany’s Hubert Burda Media threw a big luncheon in Palo Alto yesterday, which was stuffed full with Silicon Valley types. It was hosted by the company’s Steffi Czerny and Maria Burda, the wife of CEO and owner Hubert Burda, as well as well-known Israeli investor Yossi Vardi.

Burda runs an annual digital conference in Munich, called DLD (Digital, Life, Design), even though the media giant is best known for its old-line magazines about fashion, cooking and crafts.

So here’s the video!

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Friday, June 6, 2008

Kara Visits the OutCast Communications Annual Party

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Gas prices through the roof?

Mortgage crisis continues?

A looming recession?

You almost have to admire Web 2.0’s fight for their right to party.

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Monday, January 21, 2008

Kara Visits DLD in Germany: EuroSchmoozing!

Here’s a video I did about the first day of DLD–Digital, Life, Design–put on my Hubert Burda Media in Munich this week.
The three-day conference focuses on digital innovation, science and culture. It is chaired by publisher Hubert Burda and serial Israeli investor Joseph Vardi and hosted by Stephanie Czerny and Marcel Reichart.
I was here to [...]

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Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Have Yourself a Jerry Little Christmas Now?

Could Facebook Co-Founder and CEO Mark “Cindy Lou Who” Zuckerberg teach Yahoo Co-Founder and CEO Jerry “Grinch” Yang a thing or two about holiday cheer?
You can bet your roast beast he could.
BoomTown has been, we admit it, quite tough on both Zuckerberg and Facebook since we launched the site–about everything from its still unproven business [...]

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Thursday, December 6, 2007

Mark ‘Sorry’ Zuckerberg’s Beacon Memo: BoomTown Decodes It, So You Don’t Have To!

Yesterday, Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a major mea culpa blog post about the controversy around its Beacon ad product, which can track your purchases on some external sites and send the information back to your profile’s news feed.

As usual, BoomTown asked for the obligatory on-the-record interview with Zuckerberg, but he still has not invited us over to get social at his social networking HQ in Palo Alto, Calif. So while we’re waiting by the phone, we need to get busy.

Thus, we continue our thankless quest to decode all memos from Internet moguls (BoomTown speaks fluent Web 2.0 double talk).

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Saturday, December 1, 2007

A Well-Deserved Court Loss for Facebook

It should come as no surprise, of course, given it was essentially a legal temper tantrum on the part of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
But a judge in Massachusetts wisely denied an inane request by the Palo Alto, Calif.-based social-networking start-up to take down confidential court documents that 02138 magazine had made available for downloading on [...]

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Friday, November 30, 2007

Ironic, Yes, But Zuckerberg’s Privacy Violated

[UPDATED with more information.]

So exactly why did Facebook unleash such a massive legal fury on 02138 magazine yesterday over documents the publication posted online?

Because, said sources, those documents–including an application to Harvard University–contained Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Social Security number, the full name of his girlfriend and the address of his parent’s house in New York.

Now, apparently, the Beacon’s on the other foot.

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Thursday, November 29, 2007

Kara Visits the Public Relations Society of America–Silicon Valley Chapter–Dinner

Last night, the Public Relations Society of America’s Silicon Valley chapter held its annual “Media Influencer” dinner at the Computer History Museum, which featured a spate of tech journalists pitching a large room full of PR people about what’s hot in the sector.
Turning the tables this year–and apparently getting “honored” by the group–were: Victoria Barret [...]

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Friday, November 9, 2007

Kara Visits the Monaco Media Forum: Opening Dinner

So, the Monaco Media Forum in Monte-Carlo kicked off last night with a dinner at the famed Hermitage Hotel on the Square Beaumarchais.
It was a fancy gold-leaf setting for the gathering of Silicon Valley and European digital media execs, investors and entrepreneurs, a kickoff to two days of discussion about the state of tech [...]

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Sunday, October 21, 2007

Facebook Deal or No Deal: The Way They Were

Since we are refraining from writing about the current deals being mulled over by Facebook (see this post and also this disclosure)–one for its international ad business with rivals Google and Microsoft vying for the privilege of losing money in a guaranteed revenue deal and another to complete a mega-round of funding that will value [...]

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Friday, August 17, 2007

More on Facebook…

Actually, I got nothing today!
Well, not true, as the stuff I have is still baking in the journalistic oven.

But, be assured, I will keep busy ferreting out more info about what’s going on at the social-networking site, which is much in the news and on magazine covers of late.
This week, the internal corporate life of [...]

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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.

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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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