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Monday, May 11, 2009

VC (and Twitter Investor) Fred Wilson to Speak at the Googleplex on Disruption: Help Him Write His Speech

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Well-known venture capitalist and blogger Fred Wilson will be at Google Wednesday to give a talk about “disruptive industries.”

The Googlers should be mighty interested, given that the object of their current annoyance and also desire, Twitter, is one of the hottest investments of late for Wilson’s Union Square Ventures.

Before Google execs try to hand over a big bag of money to Wilson to stop the microblogging madness, Wilson asked readers in a post to help him improve the talk.

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Friday, April 24, 2009

When GeoCities Grabbed the Web’s Golden Ticket–A Trip Down Silicon-Valley-Has-No-Memory Lane

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In Web years, BoomTown is now officially 143 years old.

Why? Well, I was the one who got to write the big Page One piece in The Wall Street Journal after GeoCities was sold to Yahoo in January of 1999 for $5 billion in stock.

GeoCities was, in its way, the Facebook of its time. But, instead of “friends,” its users were “homesteaders.”

As Cher so eloquently sings: Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end.

Except they did. Yahoo announced yesterday that it was closing the GeoCities unit down, part of new CEO Carol Bartz’s war against useless assets at the troubled company.

But let’s take a stroll down memory lane, shall we?

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Friday, March 6, 2009

Twitter Business Plan Count-Up: Snuggie-Tweet!

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Yesterday, BoomTown decided to start a new “Twitter Business Plan Count-Up” because the fine folks over at the hot-as-Alabama-in-July start-up were taking too long to do so.

Oh, they’ve been promising for a while to deliver the financial goods, but Twitter still has a devil-may-care attitude toward its lack of revenues.

(Who do they think they are? General Motors?)

Thus, my next idea: A Twitter-branded device and fleece blanket outfit that you wear and that vibrates every time you get tweeted.

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Thursday, October 30, 2008

The AllThingsD.com Staff Begs for DonorsChoose.org!

Only 24 hours to go in the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008 and I am now forced to bring in the big guns.

That would be the angrily arched eyebrows of Digital Daily’s John “Patches” Paczkowski, along some of the AllThingsD.com staff, begging mightily for your donations.

Uh-oh!

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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Ay Chihuahua! A DonorsChoose.org Threat From My Kids!

Did I say that there was no limit to my pandering in order to raise the most money of all in the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008!

I did, indeed!

Thus, this week, the Swisher boys make their annual appearance to deliver a pitch about why you should give early and often to fund technology projects for high school students.

Well, more a threat than the soft sell actually, since they just saw the new Disney film, “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” and are clearly hopped up on tiny dog power.

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Tuesday, October 7, 2008

A DonorsChoose High School Musical: A Very Awkward Dance for the Kids!

It’s been just a week, and BoomTown is rocking out in the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008, with almost $4,000 raised!

It started a week ago, with us featuring a video from my hell-froze-over dinner with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who ably endured a meal with me in support of the many school children who benefit from the unique charity.

Now, I manage to get Yang in a dress and dancing in “High School Musical” to raise even more money–yipes!–but it’s for the kids!

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Wednesday, October 1, 2008

A DonorsChoose.org Miracle: My Dinner With Jerry (and BoomTown Plans to Vanquish the Naked Scoble!)

If it’s Oct. 1, it must be time for the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008!

DonorsChoose.org funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

Last year, BoomTown did pretty well, raising $12,199 from 52 donors, impacting 1,940 students and almost scoring the grand prize of a lunch with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang.

Well, I finally managed to get a dinner with him, as you can see in the video after the jump.

But now I face a more daunting task–besting the naked Scoble!

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Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Jerry’s Lunch Partners: BoomTown Not Invited

Big prolonged sigh.
We tried but failed to capture the coveted lunch with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, which was part of the October Tech Blogger Challenge for DonorsChoose.org.

Major lunchroom snub!

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Tuesday, October 16, 2007

DonorsChoose.org: Click Here and Here and Here and Here!

OK, we’re going to cut to the chase.
Give here to DonorsChoose.org.

We’re now at $12,056 with 44 donors and solidly in the No. 2 slot, with VC Fred Wilson still king of our little tech charity mountain.
Let’s knock him off!
So go now and click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here or use the [...]

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Thursday, October 11, 2007

Today, I Don’t Pay Arianna One Thin Dime to Vlog About DonorsChoose.org!

Yesterday, we slapped around VC Fred Wilson in our ongoing efforts to overtake him in our increasingly annoying journey to extract donors and dollars from geeks for a charity called DonorsChoose.org.

It’s working! We’re now hovering near $10,000 with 35 donors and solidly in the No. 2 slot, although Wilson does march on like Sherman to [...]

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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Fred Wilson Doesn’t Need a Free Lunch! (But BoomTown Does!)

Yesterday, I used my two adorable children starring in a video in what is clearly a bald-faced attempt to wrench donors and dollars from the dear readers of BoomTown for a charity called DonorsChoose.org.

How easily you are moved, as it turns out, and good thing!
Yesterday, the Swisher boys’ charm managed to more than double the [...]

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Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Using MY Kids to Raise Money for the Kids at DonorsChoose.org!

Is there no end to my groveling?
Apparently not, if it has the effect yesterday’s round of begging had by more than doubling our donor numbers and adding more than $1,500 to the AllThingsD kitty in only one day, after this post in which I egregiously use the musical stylings of Barbra Streisand to plague Yahoo [...]

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Monday, October 8, 2007

Listen to Barbra and Give for the Kids! (Also, We’ll Nosh With Jerry!)

Today, we post below our most pathetic video ever in our attempt to garner donations for DonorsChoose.org, using (and abusing) our favorite icon, Miss Barbra Streisand.
Last week, I wrote about October Tech Blogger Challenge on the the charity site called DonorsChoose.org, which funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher [...]

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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Mark Cuban Already Knows How to Tap Dance

Oh how very delicious comes the news that once obstreperous Internet entrepreneur and now obstreperous Mavericks owner Mark Cuban might appear as a contestant on the guilty-pleasure television show “Dancing With the Stars.”
According to Sports Illustrated, Cuban might join–I have truly died and gone to heaven–singer Wayne Newton and “Beverly Hills, 90210″ star Jennie Garth [...]

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Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Free to Be, Rupe and We

Should The Wall Street Journal’s paid site, WSJ.com, become free now that media mogul Rupert Murdoch has bought Dow Jones?
That debate has been all over the Web since News Corp. won its battle to buy Dow Jones (owner of this site) last week, including posts by Jeff Jarvis and Fred Wilson in favor of the [...]

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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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