Apparently, not everyone leaves Yahoo to join Microsoft.

On Friday, sources said, it was announced internally at Microsoft that Karl Siebrecht, the former president of Atlas at aQuantive, is joining AdReady at the end of the month as president and COO.

AdReady, based in Seattle, bills itself as an “advertising technology company focused on making online display advertising accessible and effective for advertisers of all sizes.”

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Here’s a longish video BoomTown did over the weekend at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

I was there to moderate a panel on Saturday titled, “Where Do We Go From Here? Icons of the Digital Age,” with YouTube co-founder and CEO Chad Hurley, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings.

I did interviews with each of them here, as well as a chat with my only indie celebrity friend, Jane Lynch, some scenes from the festival and an intro and outro from my own little stars, Louie and Alex Swisher.

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BoomTown is headed to the 2009 Sundance Film Festival today, an annual journey I make to moderate panels about the tech industry. The festival officially opened yesterday in Park City, Utah. While still largely a confab of independent filmmakers, Hollywood deal types and various celebrities rifling though swag orgies, a lot of geeks are there too.

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While recently in Los Angeles, I paid another visit on Jason Kilar, who has been quietly making the Hulu premium online video service one of the brightest spots in the Web 2.0 space. The joint venture between News Corp. and General Electric media unit NBC Universal has shown an astonishing growth since its launch in late 2007. Yesterday, for example, comScore reported that it had risen to No. 6 in online video market share in October, after big players like Google’s YouTube, Microsoft and Yahoo and in front of Disney and AOL. Here’s my latest video interview with Kilar about it all.

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While in Los Angeles, BoomTown visited the offices of Hulu, the online video service that has been an unexpected bright spot for two Hollywood behemoths–NBC Universal and News Corp. (owner of this site)–who launched the premium online video service as a joint venture last year.

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Here’s BoomTown’s longer interview with the deceptively sharp Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, which I did while I was visiting the start-up recently.
In it, we discuss a wide range of topics about the premium online video service, which is a joint venture of NBC Universal (GE) and News Corp. (NWS) (owner of this site).
In it, [...]

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After a few months of private beta, Hulu will open itself to the public tomorrow with a full-court press of publicity.
Hulu kind of deserves at least a little more attention, despite efforts by some to look for warts in the online video service, which is a joint venture between NBC Universal (GE) and News Corp. [...]

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Here’s a video I did on the panel I moderated focused on online video at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, called “Webolution!–Hollywood Adapts to the Web.”
Tech is getting a lot of attention in Hollywood, so talking about online video is a key area for the independent filmmakers who are here this year.
Topics on [...]

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I just got to Park City, Utah, for my annual visit (well, this will be my third year here) to the famous film festival that takes place in this lovely mountain resort.
While I like a good movie as much as the next person, I am no film aficionado, nor do I have a screenplay stuffed [...]

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OK, I will admit, I was busy sharpening up the knives at BoomTown HQ to prepare for the debut of Hulu this week.

Let’s just say that I have been dubious that two lumbering media companies–in this case, News Corp. (owner of this site!) and NBC Universal–could make more than a mishmash of premium video, especially given Hollywood’s glacial and cloddish approach to the Web.

Not so with regard to Hulu, whose name is still arguably as goofy as ever.

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So yesterday in a very short post, I said the $1 billion valuation that NBC Universal and News Corp. were reportedly putting on its online video joint venture was, shall we say, premature.
Here’s why: No users, no track record and no revelations about what it is actually going to look like. Also no firm launch [...]

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