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Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Guitar Hero’s Dan Rosensweig Speaks!

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Yesterday, BoomTown did a tour of the Mountain View, Calif., HQ of Guitar Hero, which is poised for a series of launches, including the fifth version of Guitar Hero and new music games Band Hero and DJ Hero.

While there, I interviewed CEO Dan Rosensweig, the well-known Silicon Valley exec who was once COO of Yahoo and who took over the high-profile division of Activision Blizzard in May in what was a bit of a surprise move into the music gaming industry.

Here’s a video of an interview I did with him about it all.

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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Arianna Huffington Talks About New Managing Editor Singh!

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While in Los Angeles today at the AlwaysOn OnHollywood conference, BoomTown ran smack into blogging empress Arianna Huffington.

She was there to give a speech called “Video Killed the Radio Star…But Can the Web Actually Save Journalism?”

Her answer was a decided yes, especially with great journalists working online, such as the new managing editor of the Huffington Post the mega-blog has just hired.

That would be former CNET Networks Editor-in-Chief Jai Singh, who quit the company last year after a dozen-year run.

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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Meet Peter Currie, Facebook’s New Money Man (For Now)

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Back in the heyday, Peter Currie was the money man to see in Silicon Valley.

As CFO of Netscape Communications, he led the famed browser start-up into history, as the first great Internet rocket ship, when it went public on Aug. 9, 1995.

Rising to insane levels, the stock was ground zero of the Internet gold rush, despite the fact that it had no profits to speak of. But it did have a 23-year-old co-founder and tech wunderkind in Marc Andreessen and a growth trajectory that was astounding.

If you think it sounds somewhat similar to Facebook today–where Currie will now help out as temporary financial adviser after the social-networking site parted ways with its CFO, Gideon Yu, yesterday–you are correct.

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Sunday, March 22, 2009

Exclusive: Dan Rosensweig Steps Up to Take His Licks as Guitar Hero Frontman

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Former Yahoo COO and current Quadrangle Group partner Dan Rosensweig will take over as CEO and president of Activision Blizzard’s powerful Guitar Hero franchise, according to sources close to the situation.

Rosensweig will run the hot gaming company’s division, located in Silicon Valley, for Activision head Bobby Kotick.

The pair know each other well, since Kotick served on Yahoo’s board for many years when Rosensweig was a key exec there. He’s also just the kind of consumer Web exec that Kotick has been looking for to turbocharge the largely retail Guitar Hero business online.

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Friday, July 18, 2008

Sure, the CBS-CNET Deal Seems Crazy–But Maybe in a Good Way

A lot of people have been piling on CBS for its deal to buy Web site operator CNET Networks for $1.8 billion in cash.

Not BoomTown.

And it is not because newly crowned CBS Interactive CEO Quincy Smith is the ever-amusing Energizer Bunny of the Internet.

Okay, CBS paid too much and that makes the whole thing suspect. But is it the wrong direction?

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Thursday, April 24, 2008

CNET and Yahoo Broadly Expand Editorial and Ad Relationship

When it reports its first quarter earnings this afternoon, CNET Networks will also announce a much-expanded editorial and advertising relationship with Yahoo that will give the tech news site broad distribution on the highly trafficked Internet portal.

CNET and Yahoo have had content licensing deals in the past, in which some CNET content has been featured in the tech areas of Yahoo.

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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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