BoomTown » sharing

Twitter Talking Separately to Microsoft and Google About Big Data-Mining Deals

Kara Swisher — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 07:48:06 +0000

Is there gold in them thar tweets?

Maybe so, because–according to sources familiar with the situation–Twitter is in advanced talks with Microsoft and Google separately about striking data-mining deals, in which the companies would license a full feed from the microblogging service that could then be integrated into the results of their competing search engines.

Sources said a number of scenarios are being discussed to compensate Twitter for its huge and potentially valuable trove of real-time and content-sharing information, generated from the data stream of billions of tweets from its 54 million monthly users.

These include a number of structures, including a payment of several million dollars to Twitter, along with various revenue-sharing proposals that would give Twitter a piece of the revenue made from search results.

The deals, stressed sources close to the situation, are nonexclusive, especially because Twitter’s management is keen to remain independent and also nonpartisan in the growing search battle between Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT).

This means Yahoo (YHOO)–which recently struck a search-technology and online-advertising partnership with Microsoft–could also license Twitter’s feed to make its search results even more robust, although Boomtown could not determine if the company is in talks with the San Francisco start-up.

Sources said it is also possible that no agreement would be reached with either company.

And execs at Twitter, Microsoft and Google had no comment when asked about talks.

But doing these kinds of data deals with big search players does make a lot of sense, since it would be hard for Twitter to turbocharge its own search engine without running into the big cash-laden guns at both Google and Microsoft, which recently launched its new Bing search service.

Twitter is, instead, seeking to create a large open platform, which many could plug into, from search engines to marketers to publishers to developers.

Twitter has also been considering offering premium services to these groups and is contemplating some form of advertising offering.

But, most of all, Silicon Valley’s hot start-up is focusing now on spurring growth and engagement, along with fine-tuning its product offering.

Being deeply integrated into big search services would give Twitter a huge footprint.

Microsoft had already done a small experiment this past summer integrating Twitter data into search results, starting with tweets of bloggers like me.

How much indexing of its data Twitter will allow is unclear, but the company has certainly bought itself time to think carefully about all its options, given that it now has a lot of money in the bank.

Late last month, Twitter raised another $100 million in new funding, after already having raised $55 million.

This has given it a $1 billion valuation, despite negligible revenue.

The valuation also effectively stated that the innovative company was pretty much putting itself out of play to be acquired and is very interested in forging its own destiny.

Both Google and Microsoft execs have contemplated the idea of buying Twitter in the past, although no serious talks ever moved forward.

If they both strike data deals with Twitter, they will get the next best thing–an ability to offer all the information disseminated on Twitter in search results.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Scribd CEO Trip Adler Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:01:24 +0000

Yesterday, BoomTown checked in with Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar about the document sharing start-up.

Today, it’s Trip Adler, CEO of its much larger rival, Scribd.

Launched in early 2007, the San Francisco-based online publishing company allows customers to share a wider range of documents, including books and manuscripts. It now claims to have 10 million documents uploaded.

Recently, some of those landed Scribd in a bit of hot water, with a lawsuit filed by an author alleging copyright violations. The lawsuit claimed that the start-up “built a technology that’s broken barriers to copyright infringement on a global scale.”

No surprise, Scribd denied the allegations.

“Scribd does not want unauthorized content on our site,” the company said. “We built the industry’s leading (filtering) technology to prevent the upload of unauthorized documents. This is one of the reasons why best-selling authors and many of the world’s largest publishers have chosen to put their works on Scribd.”

That includes a deal this summer with Simon & Schuster, a division of CBS (CBS), to sell digital copies of its books, offering publishers more control over pricing and how works are distributed.

Such efforts to become a kind of YouTube for text is certainly part of the plan for Scribd, which has garnered about $13 million in funding, including from Redpoint Ventures.

Of course, YouTube owner Google (GOOG) also has designs in the arena–although it has become embroiled in loud legal battles over the issue with publishers. And so does Kindle-creator Amazon (AMZN), of course.

Those are mighty rivals, along with the need to police itself.

Scribd’s traffic has declined from about 60 million unique monthly visitors to half that recently as it has tried to get a good handle on piracy and other reasons. That traffic has since recovered a bit to about 40 million.

The company has also been adding features, including making the site more social, in order to goose online document and book sales and advertising.

Here’s the video interview with Adler about the business:

[ See post to watch video ]

Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:05:39 +0000

On a recent visit to Los Angeles, BoomTown stopped in at the Santa Monica HQ of Docstoc, a start-up aimed at document-sharing online.

I have long been interested in the next paradigm for all sorts of publishing (see a post on my visit to larger rival Scribd tomorrow).

And Docstoc is certainly among the more innovative sites, letting users store, search and share business, legal and other documents for free.

Founded by Jason Nazar (CEO) and Alon Shwartz (CTO) and armed with several million dollars in funding from angels and venture firms–such as MySpace COO Michael Jones and Rustic Canyon Partners–Docstoc has seen millions of documents of all kinds uploaded.

Whether this turns into a massive and lucrative business or not is still unclear, but it’s inevitable that one of the start-up players will become the dominant place to find professional documents.

Nazar, whose previous life was as a consultant, talked about all this and more in my video interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

Digital Management Musical Chairs: The Tooth-Free Edition

Kara Swisher — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:30:00 +0000

Brad Garlinghouse’s appointment to a new job at AOL today as its new communications czar is yet another sign of an interesting trend for those keeping score of the comings and goings of top Internet execs.

Garlinghouse came to the Time Warner (TWX) online unit after a year-long break, preceded by six years at Yahoo (YHOO).

As anyone who watches the digital space knows by now, this kind of management musical chairs is common and never-ending.

In fact, borrowing a quote by IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) CEO and chairman Barry Diller from an onstage interview I did with him at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference and switching out Hollywood for Silicon Valley: “[It] is a community that’s so inbred, it’s a wonder the children have any teeth.”

But, given all the movement of late, this insider seat-switching seems more frantic than ever, as allegiances shift, competitors become friends and colleagues become rivals faster than you can tweet.

When he left Yahoo last summer, in fact, the digital chatter was that Garlinghouse would take a job either as a venture capitalist (he had been one once) or helming a start-up (that too, at Dialpad.com).

In fact, sources said, Garlinghouse had been considering two mobile gigs, but opted for helping to try to overhaul a troubled Web giant.

Fixing messes was the impetus of Owen Van Natta, who left a top job at social networking giant Facebook in early 2008 and by the end of the year, headed over to run Project Playlist, a controversial online music-sharing service.

But then he had hightailed it by spring to try his hand at reviving MySpace, as its CEO.

His boss, News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller, did the same, getting the hook (unfairly to my mind) at AOL several years ago and then creating an investment firm with former MySpace head Ross Levinsohn.

The pair considered being part of a bid to oust Yahoo management in 2008.

Miller’s freedom lasted only until he got an offer that he presumably could not refuse from News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch recently. (Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

The list goes on, chock full of ex-Yahoos, in fact.

Its one-time COO, Dan Rosensweig, left the company in 2006, for example, and joined the well-known private-equity firm, Quadrangle Group.

But, soon enough, he was scooped up by Activision Blizzard (ATVI) to run its Guitar Hero division.

Yahoo Network head Jeff Weiner also departed from the Internet giant, in mid-2008, for a stint at two VC firms.

He landed at LinkedIn, the business-networking service where he was named CEO in late June.

Greg Coleman ran Yahoo ad sales until mid-2007 before taking a job at AOL earlier this year, which he lost after it got new management soon after.

At Yahoo, Coleman sparked with former advertising sales head Wenda Harris Millard, whom he ousted. She went onto Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) and left there this spring for the Media Link consultancy.

Presto! She is now helping MySpace’s Van Natta fix the social networking site’s ad business.

Current Yahoo U.S. advertising head Joanne Bradford actually came from Microsoft last summer, via her own short visit to the troubled ad start-up SpotRunner.

Former Yahoo search techie Qi Lu now runs digital for Microsoft (MSFT), along with a big gang of ex-Yahoo techies he has recruited.

And Scott Moore is even better at the switcheroo. He was at Microsoft running MSN U.S. content, switched to Yahoo as its media poobah, left last year to consider a start-up and then headed back to Microsoft as head of U.S. content this year.

But former Google (GOOG) execs have also been busy shuttling hither and yon, mostly to innovative start-ups.

Of course, many find refuge at Facebook (COO Sheryl Sandberg, PR major domo Elliot Schrage and many more) and Twitter (GC Alexander Macgillivray and COO Dick Costolo).

Recent departures–such as Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, who landed at Accel Partners for now–are also likely to find new homes soon enough.

And, of course, there’s always Garlinghouse’s new boss, former Google ad head Tim Armstrong, who took over at AOL earlier this year.

We’ll skip former Joost CEO and former Cisco (CSCO) exec Mike Volpi (who is now a VC); former Netscape Communications/short-term VC/ex-banker/current-for-now CBS (CBS) digital head Quincy Smith; and Joanna Shields, who has worked at Real Networks (RNWK), Google and Bebo (which was bought by AOL)–for now.

Because, around and around and around it always goes, as you can see in this funny video below, which I posted previously:

[Musical Chair designed by Jacob Mathew.]

Sale of iLike to MySpace–$13.5 Million in Cash, $6 Million for Talent Retention–Delayed Over Tax Issues (Really!)…Plus, the List of Other Suitors!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 06:25:06 +0000

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.

That is what both iLike and MySpace execs are hoping, said sources, one of whom described the outstanding issues as a “technicality.”

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 upfront in cash, with about $8 million of that money likely going to one of its major shareholders, Ticketmaster Entertainment (TKTM), due to its preferred shares.

Another $6 million has been promised by MySpace in forward payments to retain some key employees–including iLike co-founders and twin brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi.

Although those employees can remain in Seattle, where iLike has its HQ, they must stay employed at Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace for two and a half years to get their money.

It’s that talent part of the deal that caused the Partovis to cancel the iLike board meeting, which they explained to key investors was necessary due to some confusion over how the money paid to these employees would be taxed.

A person briefed on the issue said that if it was taxed as compensation, it would have a much higher tax rate than if it were considered long-term capital gains.

The Partovis said in the email that they were working on the problem with their advisers on the sale, Allen & Co., as well as with lawyers and accountants.

Tax snafus in the middle of a sale are not exactly the way the entrepreneurial Partovis envisioned it was going to go for iLike (see my various video interview related to iLike below) when they created the compelling music sharing and recommendation service in 2006.

After only a few years, the innovative start-up claims it has 50 million registered users overall.

A lot of that growth was due to iLike quickly becoming one of the most popular widgets on social networking sites like Facebook, where it has also been the top music application, with 10 million active monthly users.

The Partovis–who once were close with execs at Facebook (see my party video below), particularly founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg–placed great faith in its growth lifting all Web 2.0 boats.

It did not turn out that way, though, especially from the important financial point of view, and iLike scrambled to diversify.

The iLike service recently began offering a music downloading service, for example, as well as other such features, all of which would be attractive to the music-centric focus at MySpace.

Once an Internet sensation, MySpace has been struggling to restructure itself after losing momentum and buzz in recent years, as well as a huge advertising revenue drop in its most recent quarter.

Its owner, News Corp. (NWS), replaced its founders with new management four months ago, including former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta as CEO.

After making major staff layoffs and rejiggering management, Van Natta and his new team have been working on an overhaul of the MySpace product and seem to be refocusing it to become a global music and entertainment service.

MySpace also has a joint venture with major music labels, MySpace Music, which has been trying to attract consumers and build a viable business. Sources said MySpace Music could also buy into the iLike deal or simply license its technology to improve its features.

Thus, purchasing iLike would fit in well with MySpace’s overall plans.

And iLike has also been in need of a fix itself.

For all its popularity, especially on Facebook, it has moved slowly toward profitabilty, and its $17 million in funding has been dwindling, as has its viability as a standalone company.

Back in more frothy Web 2.0 days, iLike’s generous funding gave it a valuation of more than $50 million, which has also lost steam over time and as the economy has worsened.

In the last quarter of fiscal 2008, for example, Ticketmaster wrote down its $13 million investment by $6 million.

Tensions between its execs and iLike have gotten worse over time, although some thought at one time that Ticketmaster would buy iLike.

No longer, which is why the founders turned to Allen & Co., as MediaMemo reported as far back as November, to find another big investor or buyer.

Wrote Peter Kafka: “Delivering free music on the Web has so far proven to be a high-cost, low-revenue endeavor…”

So, the New York deal-making firm ginned up a small group of suitors, which included Facebook, Activision Blizzard (ATVI) and Microsoft (MSFT), as well as MySpace.

Of the three, Activision was most serious, with interest in integrating iLike’s community and technology tools with its Guitar Hero franchise.

But Activision never actually made a formal bid, said sources.

Both Microsoft and Facebook also considered the purchase, but sources said they would only offer stock in a deal. But iLike wanted cash in the deal.

The Partovis were also was wary about working at either place.

Both Partovis, for example, had worked at Microsoft (Ali after selling it LinkExchange in 1998 for $265 million; Hadi several times, once following Microsoft’s acquisition of Tellme Networks, which he co-founded).

As it has turned out, in its short life, iLike’s last, best alternative is apparently MySpace.

“Look, iLike has been shopped around for a while, and while the team and technology are great, it only has one choice and that’s to be sold,” said one person involved in the various scenarios. “The question for the buyer then is whether it was worth it to pay up or just move on and do it ourselves.”

So until the bean counters settle this IRS nightmare, here is my video interview with Hadi Partovi about a year ago at iLike’s HQ in the Capitol Hill section of Seattle, when times were a little more hopeful:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here is a very dark and very shaky video I did when iLike threw a fete in Silicon Valley to celebrate its start-up two years ago and to send some appreciation in Facebook’s direction–it is so dated that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who is in the video, is still at Google (GOOG).

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

Huffington Post and Facebook Go "Social News," With Connect on Steroids

Kara Swisher — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:00:21 +0000

In an unusually robust collaboration using Facebook Connect, the Huffington Post is launching a feature on Monday called “HuffPost Social News,” which lets readers create a personalized social networking-like news page on the Huffington Post itself.

While the Huffington Post had already been using Facebook Connect since January–which allows readers of the site to log in using their Facebook identity to interact, which is mostly used to leave comments–this use essentially takes Facebook Connect and puts it on steroids.

“We are looking at HuffPost Social News like a ‘digital water cooler,’ because we see news going in that direction,” said Huffington Post Editor-in-Chief and co-founder Arianna Huffington, in an interview with me this weekend. “We did this because we are interested in real identities having real conversations about news.”

While the use of “social news” will be seen by some as simply a clever PR term, this kind of innovative deployment on the Huffington Post is actually a very big step for the site, especially as an opportunity to bind its readers to it more closely, presumably increasing engagement and traffic.

“This is a natural way to expand into the Facebook community and give users who desire to engage and comment with friends more privacy,” said Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau, with whom I also spoke earlier today. “And, like a lot of other sites, we are trying to make our site more attractive to marketers who want to engage with engaged users.”

Hippeau said he hopes that will lead to more advertising spending, although the first focus is to get people using it.

Such a move is an interesting one for Facebook too, since it is getting unusual prominence and much deeper integration on a popular news Web site, well beyond how other sites are using Facebook Connect.

If it works, HuffPost Social News will give it even more content flowing into its service, a direction that was also underscored by Facebook’s recent $50 million purchase of FriendFeed, the online content-sharing site.

Goosing interactivity and engagement is a big aim for Facebook and also lots of news sites, such as the Huffington Post.

While there are about 1.7 million comments on the site monthly, for example, if users sign up for HuffPost Social News at large rates, that could expand a lot.

This will be done via the special page, as well as a large module on every Huffington Post page you visit showing what your Facebook friends who also sign up for HuffPost Social News are posting, what’s most popular in your network and on the site itself.

As is usually the case with Facebook Connect, you can decide what is sent back to Facebook and can also hide your movements from HuffPost Social News by going into a “stealth” mode.

If left turned on, though, it captures your every click on the site, including what you are reading–which means my social site should constantly be filled with news of Britney and LiLo.

“HuffPost Social News finds your Facebook friends who are also reading HuffPost and links you together on our site so you can dive deeper into the stories you like best,” wrote Huffington in a blog post to readers of her site, which you can read in its entirely below. “The explosive growth of online social networking has fundamentally changed our relationship with news. It’s no longer something we passively take in.”

You can see that in action below on a page I created and also my module (click on the images to make them larger):

Main Personalized Page

Module

And here’s the official press release from the Huffington Post, as well as two blog posts on the subject by Arianna Huffington, one for her site and one for Facebook:

THE HUFFINGTON POST LAUNCHES NEW COLLABORATION WITH FACEBOOK–HUFFPOST SOCIAL NEWS

SOCIAL NEWS PLATFORM COMBINES POWER OF FACEBOOK WITH HUFFPOST CONTENT AND COMMUNITY

Aug 17, 2009–(New York, NY)–The Huffington Post (”HuffPost”) announced today the launch of HuffPost Social News, a collaboration between HuffPost and Facebook® that connects HuffPost users with their Facebook friends, the news they are reading and the stories they are commenting on. Through its integration of Facebook Connect, HuffPost Social News seamlessly combines the news and opinion of HuffPost with Facebook’s user experience and power to connect people.

“I’m excited to announce the launch of HuffPost Social News,” said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post. “This new platform lets our community of engaged users easily share stories and post comments for friends to see–it’s HuffPost’s version of a digital water cooler, enriching and deepening conversations around the day’s news. Social media has fundamentally changed our relationship to news. It’s no longer something we passively take in. We now engage with news, share news, react to news–news has become something around which we gather, connect, and converse. HuffPost Social News makes this more dynamic than ever.”

Said Eric Hippeau, CEO of The Huffington Post: “Our goal is to make HuffPost Social News the go-to place for Facebook users to share news–both the stories they love and the stories they hate–with friends. It should also appeal to marketers interested in reaching passionate, savvy readers who care about the news and who want to share their interests with friends.”

Said Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook: “The Huffington Post has led a revolution in how people discover and consume news. With the integration of Facebook Connect, HuffPost Social News is now leading the way to make news even more of a social experience, giving people new ways to share and filter news and current events through their networks of friends on Facebook.”

HuffPost Social News allows users to increase their presence on The Huffington Post by automatically creating personalized profile pages that keep track of all their HuffPost Social News friends. At the same time, users retain complete control over what stories and comments are shared with their Social News friends, as well as what is posted to their Facebook Wall, and into their Facebook stream. Users can also see how their friends are voting on HuffPost polls and their contributions to “Eyes & Ears,” Huffpost’s citizen journalism platform.

Said Paul Berry, Chief Technology Officer of The Huffington Post: “From the first brainstorming session in Facebook’s office to the integration of Facebook Connect, it has been truly exciting to collaborate in building this product. The future of news is social, and I’m tremendously proud that HuffPost has been so early in reaching this important milestone in how news is shared online.”

Your HuffPost Experience Is About to Get a Lot More Social!

I’m excited to announce the launch of HuffPost Social News–a collaboration with Facebook that connects HuffPost users to their Facebook friends, the news they are reading, and the stories they are commenting on.

When you sign up for it–and I hope you will right now–HuffPost Social News finds your Facebook friends who are also reading HuffPost and links you together on our site so you can dive deeper into the stories you like best. (But don’t worry, you’ll still have complete control over what stories and comments are shared with your friends, as well as what goes on your Facebook wall, and into your friends’ news feeds.)

The explosive growth of online social networking has fundamentally changed our relationship with news. It’s no longer something we passively take in. We now engage with news, react to news, and share news. News has become an important element of community–something around which we gather, connect, and converse. And we can all become part of the evolution of a story now–expanding it with comments and links to relevant information, adding facts and differing points of views.

HuffPost Social News makes this easier and more dynamic than ever. It takes social news to a whole new level. It will turbo-charge your online conversations and connections, and allow you to build and develop a community that follows what you read and care about.

Thanks to your passion and commitment, HuffPost has an incredibly active and vibrant community. You posted over 1.7 million comments on the site last month alone–with many stories attracting more than 10,000 comments. The one drawback: it’s sometimes hard to keep up with it all.

With HuffPost Social News, you can be sure that your comments won’t get lost in the mix–and that the people you care most about will see what you have to say about the stories you love or are angered by, delivered in real time. And you’ll be able to easily and immediately see who is replying to any of your comments. Of course, your comments will still appear on the full thread, so anyone reading HuffPost will be able to see them.

HuffPost Social News also taps into the other coming big trend in news: personalization. People connecting to each other using their real identities and having real conversations.

HuffPost Social News allows you to have a greater presence on our site by automatically creating personalized profile pages that keep track of all your HuffPost Social News friends–collecting all the comments you have made and the stories you have read, as well as the comments made and stories read by your friends. Think of it as HuffPost’s new digital water cooler.

HuffPost Social News is just one early piece of the social transformation of the news industry. We will be adding more social features and personalization in the coming months. The news is simply more interesting and engaging when we experience it with friends. It is an exciting change and we are thrilled to be part of it.

Sign up here to get started. And let us know what you think. HuffPost Social News is your Huffington Post.

The Future of News Will Be Social

Arianna Huffington is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of 12 books. With HuffPost launching a new social news feature today using Facebook Connect, we asked her to share her perspective on the ways social media is shaping the future of news.

Despite all the current hand-wringing about the dire state of newspapers, we are actually in the midst of a Golden Age for news consumers. We can surf the net, use search engines, access the best stories from around the world, and interact by commenting and forming communities.

The days of publishing pooh-bahs dictating to us what’s important and what’s not are over. We now can get the news we want, when we want it, how we want it and where we want it. The Web has given us control over the news we consume. Now the explosive growth of online social networking is fundamentally changing our relationship with news as well. It’s no longer something we passively take in.

We now engage with news, react to news and share news. News has become an important element of community–something around which we gather, connect and converse. We all are part of the evolution of a story now–expanding it with comments and links to relevant information, adding facts and differing points of views. In short, the news has become social.

And it will become even more community-powered: stories will be collaboratively produced by editors and the community, and conversations, opinion, and reader reactions will be seamlessly integrated into the news experience.

I’ve always been obsessed with news. As the daughter of a newspaperman, I grew up with the smell of newsprint and the buzz of breaking news. I’ve also always enjoyed bringing people together from different parts of my life and facilitating interesting conversations.

In the past, these have taken place around dinner tables, on group hikes or at book parties. Now, via cyberspace, those conversations have gone global. And they are happening in real time.

One of the reasons we launched The Huffington Post was to enhance and facilitate those conversations. While our goal was to create a one-stop spot for news and opinion with an attitude, community has always been a key element of the site. The launch of HuffPost Social News today brings together my two loves:nonstop news and the passionate discussion of the news with my friends.

Using Facebook Connect, HuffPost Social News weaves the news and opinion of HuffPost with the social capabilities of Facebook. It connects HuffPost users to their Facebook friends, the news they are reading, and the stories they are commenting on.

Want to know what your friends are reading? Check out their Facebook-powered stream on HuffPost and the personalized Social News widget that appears as you navigate the site. Want to see your friends’ comments above the thousands of strangers commenting on a story? Log in to HuffPost Social News using Facebook Connect and that happens automatically.

HuffPost Social News also taps into another big trend I see emerging in news: personalization. People connect to each other using their real identities and have real conversations. HuffPost Social News is just one early piece of the social transformation of the news industry. We will be adding more social features and personalization in the coming months, and I expect to see news organizations around the world doing the same.

The news is simply more interesting and engaging when we experience it with friends.

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.

Now That There's FaceFeed, Does That Make Twoogle More Inevitable?

Kara Swisher — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:59:43 +0000

MicroHoo. Check! FaceFeed. Check!

And Twoogle? Let’s check!

Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) have finally partnered. Microsoft is already a big investor in Facebook. And today, the huge social networking site just picked up online content-sharing site FriendFeed, which is chock-a-block full of ex-Google execs.

Now, one has to wonder if it wouldn’t be easier if Google (GOOG), the cash machine of a search giant, finally ponied up and bought the most recent star of Web 2.0?

That would be, of course, Twitter.

While previous rumors in the early spring that Google was imminently poised to acquire Twitter proved premature, the investors of the fast-growing microblogging service and Google execs have got to be thinking the same thing right about now:

Do we need each other to make some real-time noise?

It’s true that a lot of the hubbub around the idea of Twitter selling out has been mostly hype.

In addition, there are a lot of good arguments to be made that the San Francisco start-up is likely to be fine on its own and will soon find some very lucrative revenue streams.

Still, it is probably very disconcerting for Twitter to be holding onto the tail of the tiger of its own phenom and hope that it will not turn out to be a bad decision to imagine it will always be thus.

Linking up Twitter and Google is certainly a big idea, giving Google de facto ownership of real-time search, a big lift in the status-update game and yet another major and innovative Internet name brand.

It would also likely ensure that Twitter will dominate its sector for a very long time.

In other words: Gentlemen–and, since this is Silicon Valley, I do mean pretty much all gentlemen–start your engines.

Because whatever happens, it certainly will be fun to watch from the sidelines as MicroHoo, FaceFeed, Twoogle and more crash into one other and make the Internet as thrilling a place as it has ever been.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Take That, Twitter! Facebook's Cox and FriendFeed's Taylor Talk About the Deal (But Not BoomTown's $50 Million Guess on the Price)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:42:14 +0000

After Facebook announced today that it had acquired online content-sharing site FriendFeed, BoomTown had a short chit-chat with Facebook’s Director of Product, Chris Cox, and FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor.

Although neither budged on telling me about the purchase price, which various Silicon Valley venture capitalists I spoke to estimated to be about $50 million in cash and stock, they both talked about how copacetic the two companies were.

Benchmark Capital and angel investors had put about $5 million into the start-up, which–while innovative–has failed to garner the red-hot growth of either Twitter or Facebook since it was founded in 2007.

(I mean, even if No. 1 FriendFeed Fanboy Robert Scoble said that too, it must be so!)

Cox and Taylor said the companies came together after several months of casual conversations, probably sometime after Twitter spurned Facebook’s $500 million stock-and-cash offer last year.

But, as in failed love affairs, moving on is the next best thing to do!

“At its core, we have the same vision for these types of products around real-time sharing and discovery,” said Taylor. “The ideas we have and view from Facebook were converging, so this made sense.”

He also noted that Facebook’s huge user base of upward of 250 million people–especially compared to FriendFeed’s one million monthly unique visitors–”was an offer we could not pass up.”

While in a previous interview with me Taylor and one of his other co-founders, Paul Buchheit, said they wanted to remain independent, the former Googler said “this was right thing for our company.”

And how, since Facebook was working on a lot of the content- and update-sharing features that FriendFeed had been pioneering so well, and Twitter had pulled so far ahead in the horse race.

Taylor agreed, referring to Facebook. “When such a large successful company is working on solving that problem too, we realized we could work more effectively in their organization,” he said.

Facebook’s Cox agreed that one-plus-one equaled Twitter-killer. (Well, he did not say that–I did!)

“We have watched [FriendFeed's] products from the beginning and the people themselves are just amazing,” he said, making the purchase sound a lot more like a talent acquisition than anything else.

Cox noted that time was a-wasting too in the real-time and sharing arena.

“I think all this stuff is evolving very quickly and and at the speed of light and there are not many that understand it at a deep level,” said Cox. “We just feel it’s important to have those people in the room and in the building, and not just on Facebook.com, but everywhere in the world.”

While it is unclear what kinds of products would evolve, both said a “culture match” would facilitate good things.

Not that it will be easy, said Cox: “Facebook operates at such a scale that we approach this with a high degree of humility.”

Neither would comment about my question of which side would have to now reign in FriendFeed fanatic Scoble, who loves the service the way a tween girl loves Robert Pattinson of “Twilight.”

Here is my video interview with Taylor and Buchheit last December, as well as a tour of FriendFeed’s Mountain View, Calif., HQ:

[ See post to watch video ]

VMware Forks Over $420 Million for SpringSource (Plus the Press Release, Etc.)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:22:54 +0000

It’s certainly acquisition fever in Silicon Valley today.

After it was announced that that social networking giant Facebook had bought online content sharing start-up FriendFeed, now comes the news that VMware has purchased SpringSource, a privately held enterprise and Web application development and management cloud computing start-up.

The price? That would be $420 million in cash and stock.

While the blogosphere–including BoomTown–will inevitably find the FaceFeed deal more riveting, this one is obviously more important.

With the purchase of San Mateo, Ca.-based SpringSource, Palo Alto, Calif.-based, VMware–which is a top player in the virtualization space–is adding to its cloud-computing application-management strength and its ties to the open-source community.

Said VMware in a press release about the five-year-old SpringSource buy:

“VMware will acquire SpringSource for approximately $362 million in cash and equity plus the assumption of approximately $58 million of unvested stock and options. The acquisition has been approved by SpringSource’s stockholders and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2009, subject to customary closing conditions.”

Here’s the full press release from VMware (plus, here is a link to a blog post by SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson:

VMware to Acquire SpringSource

Company Adds Modern Application Platform to Cloud Infrastructure Strategy

PALO ALTO, Calif., August 10, 2009–VMware, Inc., (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced a major step forward in its journey to help simplify IT by entering into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held SpringSource, a leader in enterprise and web application development and management. VMware and SpringSource plan to deliver compelling new solutions that enable companies to more efficiently build, run and manage applications within both internal and external cloud architectures.

“Today’s modern computing environments are moving to an application and data-centric world powered by state of the art virtualized and cloud computing platforms,” said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer, VMware. “The combination of SpringSource and VMware capitalizes on this shift and places us right at the intersection of the most important forces in the software market today–virtualization, modern application frameworks and cloud computing.”

VMware will acquire SpringSource for approximately $362 million in cash and equity plus the assumption of approximately $58 million of unvested stock and options. The acquisition has been approved by SpringSource’s stockholders and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2009, subject to customary closing conditions.

SpringSource is the innovator and driving force behind some of the most popular and fastest growing open source developer communities, application frameworks, runtimes, and management tools. In just five years, SpringSource has established a presence in a majority of the Global 2000 companies, and is rapidly delivering a new generation of commercial products and services. VMware plans to continue to support the principles that have made SpringSource solutions popular: the interoperability of SpringSource software with a wide variety of middleware software, and the open source model that is important to the developer community.

Together, VMware and SpringSource plan to further innovate and develop integrated Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions that can be hosted at customer datacenters or at cloud service providers. These solutions will allow customers to rapidly build new enterprise and web applications and run and manage these applications in the same dynamic, scalable and cost-efficient vSphere-based internal or external clouds that can also host and manage their existing applications, providing an evolutionary path to the future. Forrester Research expects the emerging and rapidly growing PaaS market to expand to $15B by 2016. (Platform-As-A-Service Market Sizing, July 13, 2009)

“VMware has led the modernization of datacenter infrastructures through innovative virtualization and cloud architectures, providing customers with cost savings, agility and choice,” said Rod Johnson, chief executive officer, SpringSource. “The SpringSource team and community are committed to revolutionizing the way companies build, run and manage applications. By combining forces, I’m confident that we’ll be able to deliver a set of truly remarkable solutions that dramatically simplify enterprise IT.”

Background on SpringSource

SpringSource is at the forefront of “lean software,” a concept that is being rapidly adopted by enterprises focused on dramatically cutting cost and complexity, increasing productivity, and accelerating the delivery of high-quality, business-critical applications. SpringSource’s offerings and their underlying open-source technologies are uniquely able to address a wide range of corporate, web and commercial applications through a dynamic, yet consistent architecture. SpringSource counts a majority of the Global 2000 as current customers, and has a rapidly growing business delivering support, training and commercial software based on the well-known open source technologies and communities led by SpringSource:

The Spring Framework is the leading enterprise Java programming model; currently supporting half of all enterprise Java projects and used by approximately two million developers worldwide. The Spring Framework provides a high productivity, lightweight programming environment that makes applications portable across open source and commercial application server environments from IBM, Oracle and others.

Apache Tomcat is the world’s most widely used Java application server, deployed at more than 60% of all organizations running Java server applications. SpringSource is the key contributor to and maintainer of Tomcat and is responsible for more than 95% of the bug fixes over the past two years.

SpringSource leads Groovy and Grails, a rapidly growing dynamic language and Web application framework, each with more than 70,000 downloads per month. Together, Groovy and Grails deliver the rapid application productivity of Ruby on Rails for web applications, while maintaining skill-set and infrastructure compatibility with Java Virtual Machine (JVM) environments.

With more than 3,500 deployments worldwide, SpringSource’s Hyperic application monitoring and management tools are recognized as among the leading open source offerings in the space. In March, SpringSource/Hyperic was named one of Gartner’s “Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing Management and Professional Services.”

Facebook Acquires Not-Twitter, Oops, FriendFeed (Plus the Full Press Release and More)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:26:16 +0000

Facebook said today it is acquiring FriendFeed, the online content-sharing site.

It is a logical fit for the huge social networking site, which has lagged behind microblogging kingpin Twitter in the real-time news, search and status game of perception in Silicon Valley.

Mountain View, Calif.-based FriendFeed has also trailed well behind Twitter, despite its top-notch pedigree of ex-Google (GOOG) staffers, such as Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor. The other ex-Google co-founders of FriendFeed are Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh.

Benchmark Capital and angel investors had put about $5 million into the start-up, which had been a darling among the digerati.

Despite that, the start-up only broke one million unique visitors recently, according to several reports, while San Francisco-based Twitter was reported to have upward of 44 million in June.

But FriendFeed will surely get a turbocharge from its Facebook ownership, especially as its technology is fed to its 250 million users.

While Facebook–which is based in Palo Alto, Calif.–has added some of the same functionality that FriendFeed has innovated into its famous News Feed, it will surely get its own boost from adding FriendFeed’s dozen employees, 11 of whom are engineers.

Terms were not disclosed, but the purchase price is likely well under the $500 million Facebook offered Twitter last fall.

In fact, sources estimate to me that the price was about $50 million in cash and stock for the company, which was founded in 2007.

It is also unclear what will happen to the standalone FriendFeed service in the long run, although Taylor said in an uber-cute blog post (see below) that it would remain intact for now.

This move, although prominently unmentioned by Facebook in its full press release below, is most certainly a shot across Twitter’s bow.

Here’s the official word from Facebook, as well as that blog post by FriendFeed’s Taylor about the acquisition:

Facebook Agrees to Acquire Sharing Service FriendFeed

PALO ALTO, CALIF.–August 10, 2009–Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founder. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.”

FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request

We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle…

The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We’ve always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook’s passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online.

What does this mean for my FriendFeed account?

FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team. As usual, we will communicate openly about our plans as they develop–keep an eye on the FriendFeed News group for updates.

What about the FriendFeed API?

The FriendFeed API will also continue to operate normally. As above, we will let you know as we settle on our plan to more fully integrate with Facebook.

Check out the official press release for more information.

Clearspring Plus AddThis–But Does That Add Up to a Real Business?

Kara Swisher — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:45:05 +0000

In a move to dramatically increase its traffic and give it more tools to offer publishers, Clearspring Technologies said it will acquire AddThis, the top bookmarking and content-sharing tool on the Web.

As with many social-networking start-ups, whether this disparate traffic can be easily translated into a reliable revenue-generating business remains to be seen.

The McLean, Va.-based Clearspring–one of several widget networks seeking to connect publishers and advertisers with social tools by helping them embed small pieces of content across the Web and monetize that content–would not disclose the price it paid for the Princeton, N.J.-based AddThis.

My guess: A few million dollars in cash and maybe more in some kind of stock swap.

What exactly is Clearspring getting for this?

For starters, a tiny icon with a lot of popularity to help it toward its goal of being the universal sharing standard in the new socially-networked Web paradigm.

Clearspring claims the pair together will reach 20 billion views per month and more than 200 million unique visitors, noting it would now have a “worldwide audience comparable to the seventh largest Web property.”

While adding up such piecemeal traffic is not quite the same to advertisers as a major central Web site like Yahoo (YHOO), for example, AddThis is the most used tool for sharing Web pages through email or from Web site to Web site.

Its main competitors are ShareThis and Yahoo’s Del.icio.us, even though it has only a handful of employees.

Of course, that viral success around universal sharing might not mean massive revenue generation, even if it is a popular consumer tool.

But Ted Leonsis, chairman of the board at Clearspring, and CEO Hooman Radfar said revenue would come via advertising and, eventually, valuable data analytics the services collect about Web behavior.

Currently, said Leonsis, AddThis has negligible revenue and Clearspring has about $10 million in annual sales. Neither is currently profitable.

Nonetheless, Radfar said, “AddThis is the biggest small thing on the Web,” referring to its tiny icon that expands to offer users a choice of Internet sharing services and updating tools to a variety of social networks.

And indeed, AddThis icons are widespread across the Web, seen mostly at the bottom of content items on big sites like Time.com and MySpace.

While some question whether a big business can be created through such a far-flung network, Leonsis–one of the early execs at AOL in its glory days–said it was how the Web is evolving.

“If you said to me 10 years ago that you were going to be successful by sending people away from your site, I would have said you were crazy,” said Leonsis. “But that is what the Web is about now, and having a central network that can track this is important for advertisers.”

Well, we’ll see about that, but Clearspring certainly has a lot of money to try.

The company has received more than $35 million in funding since it was founded in 2004. Investors include former AOL head Steve Case, as well as the venture firm New Enterprise Associates.

Clearspring has about 100 employees.

The Entire D6 Interview With Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg (1 of 4)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:14:39 +0000

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

Unfortunately, due to issues too complicated to go into, we have to post all the D6 interviews in several 15-minute parts (I know, I know).

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

Here’s Part 1 of 4 of an interview I did with Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg. (I will post one video part of the discussion with Zuckerberg and Sandberg every day this week, starting Monday and concluding Thursday.)

The social-networking site has had quite a year, as the hottest and most hyped of the Web 2.0 landscape. With fast growth and still-questionable monetization power, where Facebook is going will be a journey plenty will be paying attention to.

In this video, I get a Princess Phone from Zuckerberg and Sandberg and apologize to Zuckerberg about calling him “toddler CEO.” Then Zuckerberg talks about sharing information, learning to develop by hacking on AOL, and his time at Harvard University, and Sandberg talks about her time at Harvard, in the Clinton administration and at Google.

[ See post to watch video ]