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Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Twitter Co-Founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone Speak!

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BoomTown visited Twitter’s San Francisco HQ for a pie-filled tour yesterday, but I also got a chance to sit down and have a chat with two of its founders, CEO Evan Williams and Biz Stone, about all the latest doings at the wildly popular microblogging service.

I asked a lot before I did the video, but neither deigned to talk about the swirl of rumors about which giant Internet behemoth–Google or Microsoft–was going to get its wealthy mitts into the innards of Twitter (or not!).

Nonetheless, the pair actually took time to talk about what they think is behind the surge in growth and awareness of the simple-to-use service, as well as the state of innovation in Silicon Valley.

Here’s the video.

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Kara Visits Twitter’s San FranTwittCo HQ!

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Maybe you’ve heard of Twitter?

Fooled you! Just testing to see if you’re paying complete attention to the relentless media attention on the Silicon Valley start-up of the moment!

Well, BoomTown is too, and that’s why I fired up the MINI and motored top-down on over to Twitter’s San Francisco HQ yesterday to get myself a tour of the place by none other than co-founder No-Biz-Like-No-Biz Stone.

Here’s the video.

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Monday, April 13, 2009

BoomTown Channels Miss Cleo: A Twitter Transaction? More Facebook Follies? And Will There Finally Be a Yahoo-Microsoft Deal?

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This weekend on Twitter, someone paid BoomTown a compliment of a sort: “I read you because you are a solid fact-based reporter with a Miss Cleo intuition :)

Yipes, because of being fact-based and since I had brought her up in an originating tweet, I had to point out that the well-known-via-infomercials Psychic Friends Network shaman turned out to be a bit of a fraud, although she’s always entertaining, with her jaunty Jamaican accent (she was not, of course, from there).

Nonetheless, it got me thinking about how I would predict what would result from all the deal-making that is suddenly in the air, after six months of ennui from the current economic downturn.

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Thursday, April 9, 2009

Who Will Be Twitter’s Bestest Search Friend? Google and Microsoft Engage in Yet Another Pick-Me Face-Off.

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In this digital era’s version of “Spy Vs. Spy,” Microsoft and Google find themselves in yet another sharp-elbowed battle to be the one to strike some sort of commercial search deal or product partnership with Twitter, many sources with knowledge of the situation said, as they also jockey for position to evaluate the potential of the much-hyped microblogging start-up.

After last week’s explosive rumor that Google was in “late-stage” talks to acquire Twitter, which BoomTown reported was wildly premature, I set out to try to sort out exactly what was going on.

As I found out, there was a lot–mostly much talking related to possible product and distribution partnerships, centered around Google or Microsoft, as both struggle to gauge the importance of Twitter.

It’s a familiar roundelay for the two most powerful companies on the Web.

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Sunday, April 5, 2009

With Inbox Clogged With Admirers, Twitter Should Ignore the Hype and Get Back to Work

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The hubbub that was created around a rumor that was floated that Twitter was in “late-stage” negotiation to be acquired by Google last week–which BoomTown reported was premature–definitely resulted in one certainty.

Every business development exec in media and tech rushed to lob in a we’re-interested-too communication to its founders, creating an email tsunami directed at the hot microblogging service.

While it cannot stop the suitors from asking for its hand, Twitter’s leaders have to decide if the microblogging service wants to marry now and forever hold its peace or get back to work and ignore all of its urgent swains.

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Monday, February 9, 2009

The “Billionaires’ Dinner” at TED: Readjusted for the 2009 Econalyspe

Many years ago in the midst of the Web 1.0 boom, when working as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, BoomTown redubbed an annual dinner that book agent John Brockman threw at the TED conference.

It was jokingly called the “Millionaires’ Dinner,” but I renamed it the “Billionaires’ Dinner.”

That was due to the frothy fortunes that had been made at the time by the Internet pioneers, from Amazon to AOL to eBay. Get it?!?

Well, despite the economic meltdown, there were still a lot of billionaires in attendance at Brockman’s most recent dinner last Thursday in Long Beach. But he recounted to me that the proceedings were a lot more focused on the serious times we are in, as was the whole digerati-packed conference held last week.

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Monday, December 8, 2008

Kara Visits FriendFeed (Now in Six New Languages)!

This morning, FriendFeed, which is a kind of content delivery version of Twitter, went international, launching in six new languages–German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Russian and simplified Chinese. Now live, the move is a natural extension for the Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up–founded earlier this year by a small gang of ex-Googlers, who joined together to create a service for super-aggregating updates of all kinds for social-networking and news items in an ongoing feed. Here’s a video interview I did last week with Taylor and Buchheit about a range of topics, including–my favorite–monetization, or lack thereof, of a lot of terrific services like FriendFeed and Twitter.

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Monday, November 24, 2008

When Twitter Met Facebook: The Acquisition Deal That Fail-Whaled

About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, which also included a cash component. While rumors of Facebook’s interest were brought up in an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, some shot down the idea as silly. Quite incorrectly, as it turns out, since top execs at both Facebook and Twitter were right then at the tail end of discussions, which were initiated by the privately held Facebook in mid-October, about bringing the two together. Those talks, sources on both sides said, are now over. So why did the deal break down?

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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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