On BoomTown’s trip to London earlier this week, I stopped by the U.K. and Ireland offices of Facebook for a look-see.
Located just off once-swinging Carnaby Street, it’s a very small operation, mostly dedicated to advertising sales. But I did run into some engineers too, at what is Facebook’s most important international outpost.
BoomTown was as surprised as anyone when longtime Silicon Valley Web music entrepreneur Dave Goldberg said in May that his next move was going to be investing in and running an online survey company with the unusual name of SurveyMonkey.
Most expected the former Yahoo music head to land at an entertainment or media giant, running its digital operations.
But it is at SurveyMonkey where Goldberg has swung himself and he has now made good on his promise to open a Silicon Valley office of the Portland-based start-up.
How low can Microsoft go?
Very low, it seems, in announcing really bad fourth-quarter earnings, missing Wall Street revenue estimates by an astonishing $1 billion.
Talk about a game of extreme limbo.
No surprise–Microsoft shares have been taking a beating in after-hours trading.
BoomTown liveblogged the earnings call.
Yahoo and Microsoft are still seriously talking about a search and partnership deal, never-ending discussions that might or might not come to fruition. But most investors will be focused on real results this week, as both tech giants report quarterly earnings.
Yahoo reports tomorrow, while Microsoft clocks in Thursday.
But, after a ho-hum performance last week from Google, Wall Street is not expecting much from either, as the econalypse continues to take its toll on financial performance.
Well, despite the news being as bad at Microsoft as it was at Yahoo earlier this week, the conference call after the software giant released its third-quarter earnings was 100 percent less naughty and 200 percent more glum.
In other words, while there were no F-bombs dropped, there were lots of E-bombs–as in econalypse.
Here’s BoomTown’s liveblogging of the call–featuring the software giant’s semi-apocalyptic CFO, Chris Liddell.
In BoomTown’s ongoing series, “Microsofties on Parade,” I spent some time earlier this week with Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft’s Business division.
Reporting directly to CEO Steve Ballmer, Elop is a newbie, having gotten to Microsoft only a year ago.
Which is why he is enthusiastic in his determination to tell the world that the software giant has gotten the open religion and is becoming “the most interoperable company in the world.”
Yes, he really said that.
There it was again–like the gnarly ghost of Christmas past–in the Los Angeles Times this week. But this time Lloyd Braun wasn’t going to take it anymore. The object of his ire was dropped right in the middle of a blog post about how Yahoo was “reversing its Hollywoodification” at its Santa Monica media unit offices. The piece also included old allegations from a devastating story in November of 2005 about Braun, which made him look like a digital version of Ari Gold from “Entourage.” Unfortunately, as BoomTown has found out, the bulk of those juicy anecdotes about him don’t actually check out. And therein lies a complex tale that still reverberates at Yahoo today.
Next week in Los Angeles, Microsoft will kick off its Professional Developers Conference, a place the software giant likes to unveil all kind of news in a big launchtastic flourish.
For all the noise, it’s worth paying attention, because Monday’s outlook will be cloudy, as in cloud computing.
The day will include a speech from Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, and others on, among other topics, its cloud infrastructure service initiatives–designed to match aggressive efforts from Amazon in the space.
But who knows what else is up Microsoft’s sleeve?
Here is the full memo Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent out to the troops about the big changes in its organization, including the departure of Platform and Services Division President Kevin Johnson, in which he addresses Apple, Yahoo, Google and more.
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.
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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