Earlier today, BoomTown reported that Yahoo was poised to name a few new top execs at its Silicon Valley HQ.
But the company has also hired a new director of public affairs in the nation’s capital–Amber Allman of 463 Communications.
With a spate of regulatory issues coming up around its pending search and online advertising deal with Microsoft, Yahoo will need all the help it can get.
While in Washington, D.C., BoomTown can’t just visit the policy wonks from Internet companies, so I paid a visit to Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group that works to promote privacy and protection online.
In other words, a professional–and much needed–thorn in the side of Facebook, Google and these days, MicroHoo.
Yahoo and Microsoft are poised to finally sign the definitive agreement that will govern the complex and far-reaching search and online advertising partnership they struck in late July, said sources close to the situation.
If all goes well, the various Microsoft and Yahoo execs–who have been ferreted away over the last weeks, busy dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s in the massive document–could even turn in the delayed deal homework to their bosses for signature by the end of the week.
Yesterday, BoomTown paid a visit to the Washington, D.C., office of Facebook to meet its reps in the nation’s capital.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the social networking site has a very small staff–for now, just a trio of on-the-young-side dudes–battening down the hatches from a funky office in a funky section of D.C., Dupont Circle, far from the tonier and lobbyist-rich K Street corridor.
BoomTown just got this interesting memo that Yahoo CMO Elisa Steele sent out to her staff immediately in the wake of the deal for Microsoft to take over Yahoo’s search technology business two weeks ago.
I render it unto you, dear readers, since it shows just how intent the top managers of Yahoo are, especially internally, in reassuring those concerned that Yahoo had not just gutted itself and how it would remain as innovative as ever.
Also amusing–for reasons I cannot understand since it is an internal memo–is the use of the code name for Yahoo, which is called Yale, after the famous university in New Haven, Conn.
After all the investor hubbub over the oh-no-they-didn’t deal between Yahoo and Microsoft starts to die down a bit, the pair are now embarking on the path that is the only way toward proving the efficacy of them joining together.
That would be getting a variety of state, federal and international regulators to say yes to the wide-ranging online advertising and search arrangement they announced last week so they can start making it work.
According to sources at both companies, a variety of filings will be made this week, including one to the Securities and Exchange Commission that should provide more details of the partnership.
BoomTown was so glad we had this time together with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, just to have a laugh or sing a song about a major search and advertising deal.
I liveblogged the conference call, which I updated as it happened.
Did Ballmer scream and jump up and down? Did Carol say something naughty?
Read on!
Last week, after much delay, longtime Internet exec Julius Genachowski was confirmed by the Senate as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
It is an important role for the future development of the Web, of course, although it took a dog’s age into the new Democratic administration to approve him.
Hopefully, he and the other commissioners can soon get to work on a wide range of major digital issues, such as a national broadband plan that does not cost Americans a fortune.
Here is the latest video from the fine folks at JibJab Media, whose online political satires were among the first viral ones on the Web.
Titled “He’s Barack Obama,” it premiered tonight in front of the President at the 65th Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C.
The two-minute Obama video is being launched in conjunction with JibJab’s Facebook Connect integration, so all comments on the video will run through Facebook’s platform.
Today, for interested lawyers, the American Bar Association is hosting a “brown bag” lunch and discussion in Washington, D.C. on the now-scuttled Google/Yahoo deal.
Ominously titled: THE GOOGLE/YAHOO! AGREEMENT AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT IN ONLINE ADVERTISING, the gathering could not come at a more perfect time, given that comScore’s 2008 Digital Year In Review report, released yesterday, showed the power of Google at an all-time high, no matter how much Yahoo-chasing, lawyer-rattling and lobbying Microsoft has done.
Partnering with Magnify.net, Live Earth will open its 2009 Green Inaugural Ball to the online community by taking video submissions, some of which will be shown at the event, taking place in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 19.
Anyone can submit a new or existing short film or video “expressing ideas as to how President Barack Obama and his administration can use clean energy and green technology to change the country, save the economy, and solve the climate crisis.”
That’s right, my friends, welcome to the Internet-astic, BlackBerry-loving, You-Tubing, Twittering Obama administration. Luddites need not apply.
Finally, someone who might actually understand the Internet will be taking charge of the thus-far lackadaisical government body that plays the largest role in spurring its growth.
It looks like Julius Genachowski will be tapped by President-elect Barack Obama to take on the always controversial job of chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The news was reported in several places late yesterday, and sources with knowledge of the situation also confirmed the appointment to BoomTown.
President-Elect Barack Obama arrived in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, which was the first step in what is likely to be one of the most historic inaugural events in American history.
The Obamas arrived Saturday and took up residence at the Hay-Adams Hotel, right across Lafayette Park from the White House, which was caught better than any news footage I saw by a tourist with a video camera and posted quickly online.
So begins the YouTube Presidency.
Are Google and Yahoo thinking of walking away from their controversial search advertising deal, as reported in an amusingly hedged report in The Wall Street Journal last night?
I would bet my Barry Manilow record collection, based on rumblings on Wednesday among those close to the case, that Google is a key whispery source here, sending a very public signal to the Justice Department that it would walk if pushed too far and leave regulators with egg on their faces for not letting the search giant help the struggling Yahoo.
We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.
Here’s an interview Walt Mossberg and I did with Federal Communications Chairman Kevin Martin and Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam. We paired the two together to talk about big issues facing the wireless industry, including low broadband speeds and high prices.
This is the first of three parts.
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 »
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.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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