A new survey that should surprise only the people behind the Beacon debacle shows that a majority of Americans of all ages don’t like being tracked online by advertisers.
In related stating-the-obvious news, Americans also find Jon and Kate Gosselin super-annoying.
There’s no question that Spotify is the latest hot start-up of the moment, which would be super annoying to BoomTown–who is easily irked by never-ending froth around Web 2.0 companies–if co-founder Daniel Ek were not so sharp and the digital-music-on-demand service he created not so nifty.
But, indeed, Ek turned out to be a very refreshing and level-headed serial entrepreneur in an interview I had with him yesterday in London.
Here’s the video.
The board of iLike planned a meeting earlier tonight to go over a buyout offer by MySpace, several sources close to the situation said. But it was suddenly canceled because of some thorny tax implications related to the talent-retention part of the deal to purchase the social music start-up.
This does not mean the pending acquisition is in jeopardy, sources said, and it could be on track to be signed as early as today, barring any more complications.
What’s also been unclear is the actual price the social networking giant is paying for iLike, which has been reported as about $20 million. In fact, only $13.5 million will be paid in cash, with $6 million slated for forward payments to retain key talent.
Yes, that’s Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in shorts, knees and all, in a picture taken right “after signing the papers” to acquire FriendFeed for $50 million. The deal was announced today.
One of FriendFeed’s founders, Paul Buchheit, posted them on his account at the online content-sharing site.
They look like they were taken at night in someone’s driveway in Silicon Valley (nice fence!).
Facebook said today it is acquiring FriendFeed, the online content sharing site.
It is a logical fit for the social networking site, which has lagged behind microblogging kingpin, Twitter, in the real-time search and status game of perception in Silicon Valley. FriendFeed has also trailed well behind Twitter.
Terms were not disclosed, but it is likely be well under the $500 million Facebook once offered Twitter. In fact, sources estimate to me that the price was about $50 million in cash and stock.
A few weeks ago, when I was having breakfast with legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur Marc Andreessen about his new venture fund, he talked about what he thought was critical to being successful as an Internet company.
Ticking off names, from Apple CEO Steve Jobs to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Andreessen said he always favored technical entrepreneurs for one key reason: “You need someone who lives and breathes product.”
It’s a refrain I have heard a lot recently from a wide range of people in the sector, most especially when talking about two of the more challenging renovations of key Internet brands going on of late.
That would be: Yahoo and MySpace.
According to sources close to the situation, current and former employees of Facebook are now going to be able to sell up to 20 percent of their common shares.
It is part of a $100 million add-on investment in the social networking company by the Russian investors who recently put $200 million into the company for preferred shares valued at $10 billion.
The new tender offer today by Digital Sky Technologies for common shares of Facebook is valued at $6.5 billion, or $14.77 a share.
Facebook picked a new CFO quietly, after its cloddish public parting with longtime top financial exec Gideon Yu earlier this year.
The fast-growing social-networking site said in late March it was looking for a CFO with “public company experience,” and it seems to have gotten one in former Genentech CFO David Ebersman.
And, indeed, with the addition of Ebersman, Facebook inches ever closer to an IPO.
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.
Exactly how is the introduction of vanity URLs on Facebook going to go?
At 9:01 p.m. PDT on Friday, the giant Silicon Valley-based social-networking site will allow its 200 million members to log in and claim a friendlier username for part of their URLs instead of the long string of gibberish that is now there.
But, because it is about people’s names and because it is certain to be chaotic in its execution, I think we can pretty much slap the moniker “URLgate” on this one and just call it a night.
BoomTown tried to get Chris Kelly to give up more during an onstage interview I did with the Facebook chief privacy officer last night at the third “Tech Policy Summit” and was only moderately successful in the endeavor.
Oh he is a smoothie all right, as a lawyer and now as a wannabe politician.
Kelly–who is still working at the social-networking site, where his job is to make sure consumer data, privacy, the children and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s reputation are all safe and sound–is also running for the job of California’s attorney general.
Former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta has finally been officially named as CEO of MySpace, as BoomTown reported yesterday and News Corp. announced this morning.
He will replace CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe, who stepped down from the job earlier this week. DeWolfe will remain a strategic adviser at MySpace.
Here’s the full press release.
Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will be named CEO of MySpace as early as tomorrow said sources close to the situation.
He will replace CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe, who stepped down from the job yesterday. DeWolfe will remain a strategic adviser at MySpace.
No other top execs at the huge social-networking site will be named yet, as some have reported.
Finally, Owen Van Natta is about to win out over a founder.
The former Facebook COO is poised to become the CEO of MySpace, replacing co-founder and current CEO Chris DeWolfe.
DeWolfe will likely get a title as a special adviser to MySpace in a deal that is still coming together.
But the die seems cast for Van Natta to take over the thorny job of rehauling MySpace, which is owned by News Corp.
It’s familiar territory for him.
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.
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.
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