All Things Digital

Yes, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz did indeed drop the F-bomb on BoomTown quite expertly in an onstage interview at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference recently–and, yes, it was both expected and enjoyable.

(In this picture, she is clearly trying to hypnotize me with her stare.)

But that’s not all the voluble leader of the long-troubled Internet company said in what was a sassy, funny and very lively session at D7, where she talked about a lot of topics, from Microsoft to Google to the state of the advertising market in the weak economy.

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Tomorrow, just two weeks after it took place, All Things Digital will start posting the full sessions of the recent seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

We could not accommodate everyone who wanted to come in person, so you have already lost the opportunity to annoy major tech and media moguls and my mother all in one place (although Mission Accomplished! for BoomTown), but will be able to see all the content onstage here, in its entirety, on ATD, in the exact order we put on the show at the conference.

As a primer, here’s News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and singer Jill Sobule opening the show.

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Incredibly, the seventh D: All Things Digital conference begins tomorrow night, after a year of preparation, as we raced to the finish line this past weekend.

Here is a video I did as we get ready, including: my mother being perplexed by Twitter (which will be fodder for a good question for co-founders Evan Williams and BIz Stone on opening night of D7 tomorrow); my assistant, Ed, getting threaded; our first D commercial by my friend and also new Fox star Jane Lynch of “Glee” (incredibly, we realized that she and I now both work for Rupert Murdoch); and a short primer on this year’s show by my terrific partner, Walt Mossberg.

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Was it more than a month ago that the Google was rumored to be in “late-stage negotiations to acquire Twitter”?

Not so much late-stage, I guess. So, I guess it should come as no surprise that it was time to fob yet another rumor that yet another moneybags of a company–this time, Apple–is in “late-stage negotiations to buy Twitter.”

But despite very serious interest in the hot microblogging service by every company that can afford considering such a thing, including Apple, getting across that late-stage line would require major investors in the hot start-up to be very involved, and they are not as yet.

So, rather than be on the edge of your seat about all these endless, alleged late-stage high jinks, here is a five-step list to cut out and keep when the questionable rumors of “late-stage negotiations” with Microsoft, News Corp., Verizon, Cisco and more inevitably show up.

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Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.

We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”

Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.

Well, we’re still going–making the same long-term bet that the digital revolution will keep rolling as we did at D1. Here’s our lineup for D7.

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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.

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As of today, we have made important changes to the All Things Digital Voices section.

Why? Well, a few weeks ago, ATD was caught up in a bit of the controversy that broke out due to louder-than-usual complaints by several traditional media companies about how their content is treated on the Web.

Without going into a long explanation: They expressed displeasure that some sites were misusing their content via aggregation. Those complaining included the editor-in-chief of Dow Jones, which owns this site.

The ensuing debate made us realize we needed to be a lot clearer and more explicit about what we are doing in our Voices section, which includes short excerpts of third-party content from outside our site, and to make those policies more prominent and transparent.

Some will disagree with the changes we have made and some will not think they go far enough. But we hope we have addressed the key issues.

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According to several sources, News Corp. will officially announce its shaken-but-not-stirred digital lineup this morning, as former AOL head Jon Miller takes over as the media giant’s new chief digital officer.

And Peter Levinsohn–his predecessor at Fox Interactive Media, which Miller will inherit in a new form, along with a larger portfolio, all based in New York–will also officially take up his new post as the key digital exec at News Corp.’s film and television studios in California.

BoomTown and others had reported on the changes last week.

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BoomTown has confirmed a report that former AOL head Jon Miller is set to take over as digital head at News Corp., replacing Peter Levinsohn.

But Miller has not actually signed up for the job officially, since he is still under a noncompete agreement with Time Warner from his AOL stint. It runs out in three days, in fact.

But sources said News Corp. is likely to announce Miller as its “chief digital officer” by Monday or Tuesday at the latest.

Once he does sign, which seems likely, Miller will be reporting directly to the media giant’s head, Rupert Murdoch. Based in New York, he will also be chairman and CEO of the newly created News Digital Media group.

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With so many more ex-Yahoos out there now, BoomTown put out feelers to a range of them to ask whom they would like to run the company they no longer work for. After all, who better than to pick a new CEO than an ex? The response was swift and varied wildly, depending on which way the ex-Yahoo felt the company should go, from a basic turnaround expert to–drum roll, please–his digital Holiness, Steve Jobs of Apple. No kidding.

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Ah, Michael Wolff! Always throwing stink bombs and making deliciously wackadoo declarations about the Internet.

In a recent dinner interview the author had with BusinessWeek’s media columnist Jon Fine this week, Wolff slaps around News Corp. social network MySpace, with a series of his trash-buckling phrases, some of which are true and some a bit more of a stretch.

But it’s par for the course for Wolff, as you can see here in an appearance with BoomTown on the “Charlie Rose” show a decade ago.

“It’s craziness, it’s loco, it makes no sense,” said Wolff about the Internet, circa July 27, 1998. And later: “I think the myth of the Internet is that it is going to come into everybody’s home.”

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Obviously, the dream CEO for Yahoo is News Corp. President and COO Peter Chernin.

And, no surprise, he is the No. 1 choice of most inside and outside Yahoo in the wake of the news late yesterday that its current CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang is stepping down.

Well, Yahoo would certainly be a challenge for Chernin, in terms of a corporate cleanup challenge, especially compared to figuring out how to make bank on plush toys from “The Simpsons.”

But there are many other contenders for the job, despite the slog it could be. Here’s BoomTown’s list…

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

In the less contentious spirit of DEMOfall and TechCrunch50, two demo conferences taking place simultaneously this week, we’re happy to bring you all the demos we had onstage at the D6 conference.

Next up is the demo for 23andMe, the Web-based, direct-to-consumer genome site, which showed off its new 23andWe service.

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Starting Tuesday this week, all the major players in the Yahoo-Microsoft-Everyone-And-Their-Mother circus will line their private jets up in Sun Valley for the high-powered 26th annual Allen & Co. confab of tech and media moguls.

That would be Microsoft, Yahoo, News Corp., Time Warner (which owns AOL), as well as Google.

It could be like that five families sitdown in the “Godfather” movies, except none of the parties can even seem to metaphorically whack each other, as the Yahoo saga drags on interminably.

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Sorry for the delay, but we’ll finally start posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May in their entirety.

Kicking off the proceedings will be what most of the attendees at the conference told us they considered their favorite interview, which Walt Mossberg and I did with News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch.

Here’s Part 6 of 6 of the Murdoch interview.

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