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Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Digital Management Musical Chairs: The Tooth-Free Edition

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Longtime Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse’s appointment to a new job at AOL today is yet another sign of an interesting trend for those keeping score of the comings and goings of top Internet execs.

As anyone who watches the digital space knows by now, this kind of management musical chairs is common and never-ending, although it seems more frantic than ever of late.

In fact, borrowing a quote by IAC/InterActiveCorp chairman and CEO Barry Diller from an onstage interview I did with him at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference, and switching out Hollywood for Silicon Valley: “[It] is a community that’s so inbred, it’s a wonder the children have any teeth.”

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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

BoomTown’s Top 10 List of Fact-Challenged Revelations That Should Be in the Facebook Tell-All Book

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How much is BoomTown and everyone else in Silicon Valley trying to nab a copy of Ben Mezrich’s likely-to-be-entirely-made-up-but-who-cares tale of dirty doings at Facebook?

Muchety-much! But, so far I have come up peanuts in grabbing an early copy of the work of “fact”-ion–titled “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal”–which is set to come out July 14, along with a movie later.

Facebook is not pleased, of course, and will likely be challenging Mezrich’s work as specious dreck, but here’s my own list of 10 completely made-up, utterly fabricated, just-call-me-Jayson-Blair facts that should be in the book.

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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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Thursday, April 2, 2009

The Entire Facebook Goodbye-Gideon-We-Are-the-Money-Champions Memo

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Dear Elliot Schrage:

BoomTown wins.

As Sheryl knows from experience, don’t mess with the Swish. Or Texas. Or Zohan.

Just don’t mess.

For everyone else, here is the entire memo that Facebook sent out this week to its staff about the departure of CFO Gideon Yu and the financial status of the social-networking start-up, which some had been questioning.

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Thursday, February 26, 2009

Liveblogging the Facebook Our-ToS-Is-Your-ToS Press Conference

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BoomTown is impatiently cooling heels waiting for a press conference to begin about “new steps Facebook is taking to improve user understanding and ownership of the Facebook terms of service and, more generally, the policies of the Facebook service.”

The Yahoo reorg finally announced this morning is positively thrilling in comparison! It’s like being at the Constitutional Convention, except for geeks.

But we’re liveblogging it anyway!

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Monday, August 18, 2008

The Curious Case of Facebook’s Benjamin Ling and Sheryl Sandberg

Here’s one certainty in the hubbub that has resulted in the wake of the departure of high-profile exec Ben Ling from Facebook last week: COO Sheryl Sandberg is definitely not responsible for the melting of the polar ice caps.

That’s the joking question–Was global warming Sandberg’s fault too?–that was asked at a staff meeting at the social networking start-up last Friday afternoon, after the news of Ling’s departure, on the heels of some other previous employee exits, suddenly morphed into a series of increasingly vituperative posts on the Valleywag tech gossip site that all centered on what blogger Owen Thomas called Sandberg’s “reign of terror” at Facebook.

The truth of the situation, though, is actually a lot more interesting.

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Thursday, August 14, 2008

Ben Ling Lands (Back) at Google–This Time, at YouTube

Ben Ling–the high-profile Facebook platform exec who came from Google less than a year ago and then up and left the social-networking site earlier this week–is heading back to Google, this time taking a job leading monetization efforts at YouTube, according to sources.

On Tuesday, it was reported here that Ling was leaving his job at Facebook, where he has been director of platform product marketing.

It is a move that will surely spur many to rev up the Facebook-versus-Google stories, given that several Google execs have been recruited by Facebook over the last year.

Apparently, the Empire does strike back.

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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Ben Ling to Leave Facebook

Earlier this afternoon, sources told BoomTown that Ben Ling was leaving his job at Facebook, a high-profile departure given that the social-networking company grabbed the well-known techie from Google.

Ling and Facebook have since confirmed the departure to me.

At Facebook, Ling has been director of platform product marketing.

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Thursday, June 26, 2008

Winklevosses AboutFacebooked!

Ah, the Winklevosses!

They lost.

In court, I mean, not in rowing!

But I am sad to say BoomTown is deeply uninterested in the long-running legal struggle between Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the hot social-networking site and the group affiliated with ConnectU–heretofore referred to by BoomTown as NotFacebook.

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Harvard Dropout Zuckerberg Feted by, Well, Harvard!

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Oh the sweet irony of Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg getting awarded a big round glass object, suitable for mantel-showing-off, from Harvard types.

Especially since he is now the school’s second most famous tech mogul dropout–after Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

But that was the case last night at the San Francisco Airport Hyatt Regency, where the 24-year-old Zuckerberg collected the 30th Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award from the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California.

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Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Facebook Gets Harvard Business School Kudos

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While it is not yet clear exactly what kind of business case study Facebook will turn out to be in the end–a raging success or a raging something else entirely–that has not stopped Harvard from feting the hot and hyped social networking site.

That would be the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California, which will bestow upon Facebook its 30th Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award on June 17 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport.

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Monday, May 5, 2008

Google’s PR Head Elliot Schrage Heads to Facebook

The Googlefication of Facebook continues, as Elliot Schrage, the search giant’s vice president of global communications and public affairs, takes the title of vice president of communications and public policy at the popular social-networking site.

Schrage confirmed his new job to BoomTown, right after he friended us on Facebook last night, using its new chat feature. [...]

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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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