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Yahoo Sorry About Lap Dancers at Hack Day in Taiwan–So What's the Excuse for Last Year's Go-Go Girls?

Kara Swisher — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:37:01 +0000

One word: Shameful.

So, no surprise that Yahoo (YHOO), which is trying mightily to burnish its image worldwide, quickly apologized for the presence of women lap dancers onstage at its Open Hack Day in Taiwan last weekend.

In a post on its Yahoo Developer Network blog tonight, titled “Sorry,” YDN head Chris Yeh wrote:

All,

I wanted to acknowledge the public reaction generated by the images of female dancers at our Taiwan Open Hack Day this past weekend. Our hack events are designed to give developers an opportunity to learn about our APIs and technologies. As many folks have rightly pointed out, the “Hack Girls” aspect of our Taiwan Hack Day is not reflective of that spirit or purpose. And it’s certainly not the message we want to send about our values here at Yahoo!. Hack Days are about making everyone feel welcome, including women coders and technologists.

This incident is regrettable and we apologize to anyone that we have offended. Rest assured, it won’t happen again.

Best,
Chris Yeh
Head of YDN
twitter: @ydn
email: cyeh at yahoo-inc dot com

Ironically, in a post listing the winners and details of of the Open Hack event, at which Yahoo invited outside developers to brainstorm, Yahoo’s Erik Eldridge noted earlier today (italics are mine):

“This was our second visit to Taiwan, and we were really looking forward to coming back to see the passionate Taiwanese developers.”

Ouch. Worse still, top Yahoo execs–such as Taiwan CTO Joy Chan, Asia head Rose Tsou and Chief Technologist Sam Pullara, all pictured here with another Yahoo exec, Peter Lin–were in attendance at the event, although it is not clear if any of them attended the lap dance performance. (Yahoo PR is checking on that now for me.)

Like the image above, here are some more pictures of the lap dancers from a Flickr video, posted here, which has since been made private (click on the images to make them, um, larger):

And, rut-roh, here is a link to some more, even shorter-skirted photos on Flickr.

But, perhaps worst of all, this kind of thing is not new for Yahoo’s hack events in Taiwan, at least, where there seems to be some history of this sort of Pussycat-Dolls-meets-geeks tone.

It is not clear why all the thumpa-thumpa music and dancing gals did not engender complaints last year, although I am guessing the nerd lap action sent over the top.

In any case, here are four videos from the event in 2008 of even more gyrating ladies, which you can contrast with a video from Yahoo’s New York event on Oct. 12 of this year.

UPDATE: The videos have been suddenly made private by the person who posted them since I posted them last night, as they now say when you click them. They are not searchable or available any longer on YouTube. But you can see the situation from the images on the videos.

(If you want to know what a lap dance is, by the way, try Yahoo Answers!)

The Web Helped Kill Gourmet? If So, Now I Hate the Internet!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:39:24 +0000

Say it ain’t so.

Having fully embraced the Internet–sometimes to much disdain from old media colleagues back in the day–since the early 1990s as the way of the future in publishing, and even going to far as to abandon a career in print forever some years ago, BoomTown is bereft at the news yesterday that Gourmet magazine was being shish-kababbed.

Gourmet has been, since I started reading it as a young girl, one of the more perfect magazines–full of glamorous travel locales, stunning photos of food and sumptuous prose, all beautifully edited.

Let’s all agree first to blame owner Condé Nast, the famed magazine unit of privately held Advance Publications, for deciding to shutter the elegant and iconic Gourmet–which has been around since 1941–after the November issue.

While circulation remained steady at Gourmet at just under one million monthly paying subscribers, Condé Nast Chief Executive Officer Chuck Townsend pointed to a fall-off in advertising spending by luxury brands that resulted in a money-losing mess.

But, in a follow-up piece in The Wall Street Journal, titled “Gourmet Magazine’s Demise Gives Readers Empty Feeling,” plunging newsstand sales were also noted, apparently due in part to the impact of the Web.

“Gourmet has had to compete with food-related Web sites, which are often free and contain up-to-the-minute content,” said the Journal article.

In other words, the same thing that is occurring in all arenas–from food to tech to fashion to news–was left unsaid.

As in: The scourge of the Internet, laying waste to all those it comes in contact with.

But I dearly hope that this episode with Gourmet does not become another one of those death-by-digital cautionary tales, a case study that no one can sustain this kind of highbrow, expensive-to-make print media anymore, even the free-spending types at Condé Nast.

I am not sure that’s exactly true, though, since the analog experience Gourmet provided was not the same as what’s on the Web, which is what probably kept its circulation steady over the years.

It was clearly an issue of the econalypse–obviously helped along by the fact that people’s reading habits are shifting to online, thought that’s not the root issue.

That’s why Townsend added that Gourmet might live on in books, on television and, most likely of all, on the Internet.

That Gourmet already has a dullish Web site was not mentioned since it is free and not particularly different from the magazine–a decent repurposing, but a repurposing nonetheless.

Now that there is no magazine to fill that Web void, it will be interesting to see if more could be done online with the iconic foodie brand.

Or not.

(That September cover picture above is a quince, by the way, which most would never really know without–um, er–the help of Gourmet.)

Twitter Investors Celebrate: The Paparazzi Proof!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:30:52 +0000

Well, it’s not like Twitter’s investors are Britney Spears or anything, but somehow, the $1 billion valuation of Twitter deserves a BoomTown all-lenses-shooting response.

After all, I have made much hay from taking the name of one of its founders, Biz Stone, and making lighthearted wordplay with it, especially around the idea that a business plan is sorely lacking at the microblogging hottie start-up.

As in: No-Biz-Like-No Biz Stone. Or Ain’t-Nobody’s-Biz-If-There-Is-No-Biz Stone. And, Biz Stone-Cold-Profits.

So, I rummaged around and found this perfect image of one of its money men celebrating Twitter’s recent $100 million funding.

Thus, here’s the photo proof of one Twitter investor–who looks a lot like T. Rowe Price’s Henry Ellenbogen to me–in his true state:

Mount Techmore: Pogue, Baig, Levy and Mossberg at Apple Event

Kara Swisher — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:11:43 +0000

BoomTown could not resist posting this photo for posterity’s sake, taken by All Things Digital Webmaster and master photog Adam Tow.

It pictures a quartet of the tech media’s heavy hitters, all attending at the Apple (APPL) event in San Francisco today–including, from right to left, Walt Mossberg of ATD and The Wall Street Journal, Wired’s Steven Levy, Ed Baig of USA Today and the New York Times’s David Pogue.

They look almost harmless. Almost!

(Click on the image to make it larger.)

Boys Will Be–Especially, in Silicon Valley–Boys: Some Goofy Photos Après FaceFeed

Kara Swisher — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:39:09 +0000

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, to much merry comment.

They look like they were taken at night in someone’s driveway in Silicon Valley (nice fence!), although the person who took the shots is not identified.

(BoomTown is assuming it was not Twitter’s Biz Stone, since it would be a total geek rumble.)

From left to right, above: Vaughan Smith, Facebook’s deal guy; FriendFeed co-founder Jim Norris; Buchheit; FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor; and Zuckerberg.

Buchheit said in a comment that the last co-founder, Sanjeev Singh, was boarding a plane and was not there.

In the second picture, below, social networking czar Zuckerberg is seen bathed in the light of one of his very best friends, an Apple (AAPL) MacBook Pro, yukking it up with his new minions–ex-Google (GOOG) execs, who will soon discover that one Mark decree is equal to one Sergey order plus one Larry declaration from on high.

Cloudy With a Chance of Computing: BoomTown's NPR Debate With Harvard Law Prof Zittrain

Kara Swisher — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:00:23 +0000

This morning, BoomTown was interviewed on the very terrific National Public Radio talk show, “On Point,” along with Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain.

The program, moderated by Tom Ashbrook on Boston’s WBUR station, was titled “From Desktop to the Digital Cloud” and dealt with the increasing move of data of all kinds online and into the so-called “cloud.”

In other words, eventually, a completely virtual life for music, photos, records and more, and the end of packaged software.

Zittrain, who was co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, also wrote the scary-sounding book, “The Future of the Internet–and How to Stop It”–a kind of ladies-lock-up-your-daughters title it’s hard not to love for its chutzpah.

He also penned an op-ed piece for the New York Times recently, with another corker of a title: “Lost in the Cloud.”

Some of the “real dangers” of the move to cloud computing that Zittrain cited in the piece: Losing control of data, losing data itself, privacy issues, federal government overreaching, even more nefarious governments abroad and a damper on innovation.

Zittrain is a smart cookie, to be sure, although I did not really agree with him at all on the show about pretty much any of his concerns.

For some non-cloud-friendly reason, WBUR does not allow me to embed the show here; you can listen to it in its entirety by clicking here.

Also, here is a posted response by Zittrain after the conversation, in which I failed to assuage him. He remains “still worried.”

From the Department of I Can Hardly Wait: A Sneak Peek of the New Microsoft Store

Kara Swisher — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:50:56 +0000

Today, Microsoft (MSFT) tweeted a photo of the wall in front of one of its upcoming retail stores, either in Scottsdale, Ariz., or Mission Viejo, Calif.

You can see it below, as well as the Twitter post, although it is not clear which location it is.

Frankly, those mall potted plants could be just about anywhere–I am guessing some Foot Locker is right around the corner and an Outback Steakhouse is not far either.

This does not bode well if the software giant is hoping to one-up the sleek and hip Apple (AAPL) store vibe.

In fact, that’s where BoomTown is off to now, to nab an early place in line for an iTablet.

(Click on the images to make them larger.)

(By the way, Microsoft made one failed foray into retail many years ago in San Francisco, which you can read about here.)

The Outage Aftermath: Louie Swisher Hearts Facebook, but Twitter Not So Much

Kara Swisher — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:37:44 +0000

Like grandmother, like grandson.

Yesterday, I told my No. 1 son, Louie, that Twitter was down, after a denial-of-service attack.

He was–shall we say–not very sympathetic, as you can see in the video below.

Interestingly, Louie’s response was similar to my mother’s, Lucretia Carney, who mocked the San Francisco-based microblogging service at a gas station on the way to my interview with its founders at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference (see her video below too, as I continue to use my poor family as props in interviews).

It’s just anecdotal, of course, but it turns out their opinions actually track on several recent reports, the latest coming from Nielsen.

It showed that the 25-and-under crowd is definitely not the group adding to the site’s tremendous growth.

Using a panel of 250,000 U.S. Internet users, the data (which you can see above–click on the image to make it larger) said that there are fewer young people on Twitter than on the Web itself–16 percent versus 25 percent.

Older people, like my mother, are also a smaller group, at 20 percent of Twitter. The biggest and fastest-growing group on Twitter is 25 to 54, just like me, an obvious fan of the service.

An earlier anecdotal report from Morgan Stanley (MS) posited similar findings.

Facebook, of course, is hugely popular with young people. And, with Louie, who–even at the tender age of seven years old–wants me to set up an account now on the Silicon Valley-based social networking site, to be able to upload video, photos and more.

Check out his and my mother’s thoughts on the subject:

[ See post to watch video ]

Liveblogging Fortune Brainstorm Tech: Twitter Co-Founder "Yes-There-Is-A" Biz Stone

Kara Swisher — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:45:42 +0000

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone took the stage at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference late this afternoon and was greeted by that old chestnut: When is Twitter going to make some simoleons?

Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky, who interviewed Stone (the pair are pictured here) posted a poll about that and a few other topics (the audience preferred Facebook to Twitter by about three to one, for example), and then asked a question he said was on the minds of many in Silicon Valley:

“Why the hell aren’t you guys making money?”

“I think that’s a legitimate concern,” said Stone. “We need to focus on value before we focus on profit.”

But, he added that the San Francisco-based Twitter was ready to show some commitment to revenue this year.

Oh dear, what will BoomTown have to gripe about at Twitter now?

Because–aside from the lack of a business model–I must confess I like Twitter an awful lot and find it extremely useful!

Earlier, Stone made the salient point that Twitter was just in the first innings.

“We have a lot of growing to do,” he said. “In general, we feel we are about one percent into the growing of Twitter.”

One more important issue than money-making, he noted correctly, was that the level of engagement at Twitter is not as high as the level of awareness.

“We just have to position our product better,” said Stone.

Of course, Lashinsky had to ask about the recently stolen documents that a hacker nabbed from some Twitter employees’ personal accounts.

Stone said that there are “unpolished notes,” which only “give you an idea of scope we are thinking of…the idea is that we are thinking big.”

Lashinsky asked if Twitter would sue either TechCrunch, which published some of the stolen documents, or the hacker who stole them.

(My first thought: Let’s all pray that TechCrunch will avoid touting that navel-gazing nonstory into the weekend.)

“I don’t know,” said Stone diplomatically, since TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington was sitting right in the room. “In general, we have a responsibility to look into these things and see what makes sense.”

Then, it was pretty much back to business models, and Stone seemed open to a lot of them, as long as they were not forced on the innovative digital darling.

“We want to develop a revenue model that is baked-in…and is not something that is tacked on,” he said.

Some ideas: Advertising, of course, as well as commercial accounts and verifying brands.

“We spent a lot of 2008 trying to get ahead technically of the unexpected popularity,” said Stone. “The very, very high level [of what Twitter needs to be doing] is to add more value to users.”

That means more focus on adding new features, such as a reputation system, better discovery and more explanation–for David Letterman, for example–of exactly how Twitter can be used.

And yes, making money. Stone noted that Twitter wanted to change the world too, and the best way to do that was to make “tons of money.”

“What we don’t want is to become that child actor that grew up all freaky,” he said, noting a Ron Howard development cycle was Twitter’s goal.

All hail Opie Twitter, oops, Taylor!

[Photo credit: Brad Markel for Fortune]

Yahoo Confirms Xoopit Purchase

Kara Swisher — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:44:57 +0000

Yahoo confirmed the news–first reported by BoomTown and in The Wall Street Journal last night–that it was buying Xoopit, the San Francisco-based social email company.

And it did so in both a blog post and on Twitter, as you can see here:

@karaswisher @jvascellaro Your scoops confirmed http://bit.ly/gpOT2

Well, thanks! But we are already onto new scoops, so try to keep up!

The price for the acquisition, which Yahoo (YHOO) did not reveal, was about $20 million, according to sources.

In its blog post, titled “Xoopit + Yahoo! Mail = Moving beyond that massive digital shoebox,” Yahoo’s SVP of Application Products Bryan Lamkin wrote, in part:

With the integration of Xoopit’s platform technology and capabilities, the task of sending photos via email will be as easy as it should be and sharing photo albums with friends and family members will also be a cinch. You’ll be able to share your pictures among a group of friends or family like never before–combining pictures from numerous sources into a single album for a private group to view. And soon your inbox will become an organized photo index as well. Just imagine having a tool that collects all the photos you’ve sent and received over the years into that scrapbook you’ve never had time to assemble.

In short, Xoopit will bring phenomenal photo organization, improved photo sharing, and the serendipity of discovering forgotten photos to Yahoo! Mail.

Why is this such a big deal? Yahoo! Mail is actually home to one of the largest online photo repositories in the world. And every day, millions of you use Yahoo! Mail as your primary way to share the photos of important moments in your lives. While social networks and community sites are great for sharing photos with everyone you know, we realize it’s not for everyone or every occasion. For many, email is still best for sharing photos among a more select group of friends or family. And now we’re making it all that much easier for you.

Xoopit finds photos, videos, links and other files in email so that users can surface and then share them on many sites, such as social networking giant Facebook. It also has other products that essentially enliven email.

Xoopit’s investors–Accel Partners and Foundation Capital, along with several angel investors–have pumped about $6.5 million into the company since 2006.

As I previously reported, sources said Yahoo was first impressed with its innovative plug-in that works with Gmail from Google (GOOG), and has been looking at the company for a while, previously offering about $10 million for it.

Xoopit also makes a similar photo-sharing application for Yahoo Mail, which it launched late last year.

The opening up of its popular email product to a variety of third-party applications in order to make it more robust has been a goal of Yahoo recently as it seeks to socialize one of its most popular products.

Interestingly, in the Yahoo blog, Lamkin said Xoopit was Yahoo Mail’s most popular third-party app.

Here is a screen shot of Xoopit in action in Yahoo’s email offering (click on the image to make it larger):

Yahoo to Acquire Xoopit for About $20 Million

Kara Swisher — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:00:12 +0000

Yahoo plans on announcing Thursday that it has bought Xoopit for a price in the $20 million range, according to several sources, one of its first acquisitions in a long while.

Reached late this afternoon by BoomTown, a Yahoo (YHOO) spokeswoman declined to comment about the acquisition. Xoopit did not respond to emails earlier today.

But sources said it was a done deal to buy the San Francisco-based social email start-up that finds photos, video, links and other files in email so that users can surface and then share them on many sites. It also has other products that essentially enliven email.

Xoopit’s investors–Accel Partners and Foundation Capital, along with several angel investors–have pumped about $6.5 million into the company since 2006.

According to sources, Yahoo was first impressed with its innovative plug-in that works with Gmail from Google (GOOG), and has been looking at the company for a while, previously offering about $10 million for it.

Xoopit also makes a similar photo-sharing application for Yahoo! Mail, which it launched late last year.

The opening up of its popular email product to a variety of third-party applications, in order to make it more robust, has been a goal of Yahoo recently, as it seeks to socialize one of its most popular products.

One source said Xoopit was a good fit for Yahoo because it allowed the company’s email to be the platform that could knit together other social networking services, such as Facebook. This is seen as a core feature, although the Silicon Valley-based company is also opening its email products up to outside developers.

Yahoo has been planning on announcing the acquisition on Thursday at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference, where SVP of Applications Products Bryan Lamkin is appearing on a panel titled, “Dollars & Demographics: Capitalizing on Demographic Trends.”

Lamkin, a former Adobe Systems (ADBE) exec, now runs the Yahoo unit that includes email and other communications and communities products. He was hired in April by CEO Carol Bartz.

That panel topic is a little ironic, several sources joked, since Xoopit is not profitable and has very small revenues thus far.

The Wall Street Journal also reported on the deal, although it said Yahoo and Xoopit were still in late-stage talks and the deal was not complete yet.

But, according to my sources, it is done.

What Hath Flip Wrought?–The Ghoul Edition

Kara Swisher — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:06:27 +0000

Earlier this week, BoomTown pointed out how Cisco (CSCO) Chairman and CEO John Chambers was captured doing duck calls on the Flip digital video camera, made by the start-up his company bought in March for $590 million.

That was an adorable use of the consumer electronics device. But in the not-so-cute department, I submit this photo above.

Sitting next to her boss, Barbara Walters, an ABC producer used it to ghoulishly take shots of the kids of pop legend Michael Jackson memorial service on Monday.

Noted the TMZ celebrity news site:

“During last night’s ‘20/20′ Michael Jackson special, Walters showcased footage shot by an ABC producer sitting next to her at the memorial. The video captures Katherine Jackson and Michael’s kids two rows in front of Barbara watching the service–despite the fact that tickets to the event clearly state ‘no camera/video/recording.’”

While readers of this blog know I am all for annoying execs with the Flip treatment, pointing and shooting at what is essentially a funeral service, given how much video was available already of those kids (already being sadly overexposed, but that’s another issue): Yuk.

Here is a link on the TMZ of the video in use by Walters.

[Photo courtesy of Getty Images.]

New ATD Features: Topic Pages and Finding Jobs (No, Not Steve!)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:57:42 +0000

Here at All Things Digital, we are always fussing away on our site, making a variety of improvements regularly to deliver a better experience to our readers.

In that vein, we have recently added two new features over the last few weeks, both of which deserve a look-see: Topic pages and job listings.

The first is our attempt to offer a new and easier way for the ATD audience to navigate specific information, by gathering in one place a selection of blogs, columns, videos and photos on the site, all related to a single popular topic, all without requiring a user to search via keywords.

The variety of our topic pages will grow over time. But right now we have special pages for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone 3GS, the Palm (PALM) Pre, the new Bing search service from Microsoft (MSFT) and news from Apple’s recent Worldwide Developers Conference.

Secondly, we’ve partnered with Simply Hired to offer paid job listings on AllThingsD.com, right from the front page. Starting this week, you’ll find Simply Hired widgets with current job opportunities on pages across our site, including here.

Recruiters can post jobs directly to the ATD jobs page, and these listings are also distributed to more than 5,000 partner sites in Simply Hired’s network, including GigaOM, Mashable and WashingtonPost.com.

(Full disclosure: Simply Hired, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., has raised some of its funding from the News Corp. (NWS) digital unit, Fox Interactive Media. News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Bing Marketing Dollars at Work: Farewell, Michael Jackson

Kara Swisher — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:46:52 +0000

Where is Microsoft (MSFT) spending its $100 million in marketing for its new Bing search service?

Well, here’s a photo that was forwarded to me showing an advertisement on top of a taxi in Manhattan of a goodbye message from Bing, as well as GE (GE) entertainment unit NBC, to the late pop legend, Michael Jackson.

It was a joint effort from Bing and NBC, said a Microsoft source. The software giant and NBC have a strong partnership surrounding the launch the search service.

Done by Show Media, which specializes in this form of advertising, the text–with a picture from Jackson’s “Thriller” album–reads: “We will miss you Michael.”

Presumably, enough of a condolence to get fans to search about him on Bing–instead of on Google (GOOG) or Yahoo (YHOO)–and get news updates from NBC’s many media outlets.

Jackson’s sudden death last week caused a massive surge of activity all over the Web, including at search engines.

Here’s the taxi-topper image (click on it to make it larger):

Photobucket Layoffs Today: One-Third of Staff Let Go; Other FIM Units Also Impacted

Kara Swisher — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:19:20 +0000

The layoffs at Fox Interactive Media moved on to Photobucket today, as one-third of its staff of about 120 were let go, sources close to the situation said.

The photo- and video-hosting service was bought for $250 million in mid-2007 by News Corp. (NWS).

A FIM spokesperson confirmed the layoffs after being contacted by BoomTown, but declined to give specific numbers. But sources told me a total of up to 75 people were fired.

“As part of our continuing review of each of the FIM business units, employees were informed of job cuts today at several of our sites. We made these cuts to ensure that our resources are aligned properly with our business goals, and at a scale that will enable us to operate as efficiently as possible,” said the FIM spokesperson.

It is all part of a series of job cuts that are now hitting FIM properties other than MySpace.

The social-networking site has seen massive layoffs over the last two weeks, both in the U.S. and internationally.

Photobucket was hardest kicked, with 35 people fired, while other properties, such as the IGN videogame and entertainment unit, had the other layoffs spread among them.

Cuts at IGN, for example, were minimal, and it was also hiring in other parts of its business.

FIM’s whole structure itself is undergoing a shift, along with a likely name change, as BoomTown previously reported.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)