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Friday, March 6, 2009

Twitter Business Plan Count-Up: Snuggie-Tweet!

snuggie

Yesterday, BoomTown decided to start a new “Twitter Business Plan Count-Up” because the fine folks over at the hot-as-Alabama-in-July start-up were taking too long to do so.

Oh, they’ve been promising for a while to deliver the financial goods, but Twitter still has a devil-may-care attitude toward its lack of revenues.

(Who do they think they are? General Motors?)

Thus, my next idea: A Twitter-branded device and fleece blanket outfit that you wear and that vibrates every time you get tweeted.

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Monday, November 24, 2008

Mark Zuckerberg Talks Twitter With John Battelle (When He Was Talking to Twitter About Buying It)

Here’s the video of Web 2.0 Summit host John Battelle interviewing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a few weeks ago, in which Battelle floated a rumor that the social-networking site might be interested in buying Twitter.

If you want to see the exchange, it starts at 22:15 minutes, when Battelle asks: “Is Twitter just a feature of Facebook?”

Awkwardness ensues from there until 23:07 minutes, with no direct question about an actual acquisition effort asked–getting Zuckerberg out of fibbing, since talks between the pair were then going on.

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When Twitter Met Facebook: The Acquisition Deal That Fail-Whaled

About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, which also included a cash component. While rumors of Facebook’s interest were brought up in an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, some shot down the idea as silly. Quite incorrectly, as it turns out, since top execs at both Facebook and Twitter were right then at the tail end of discussions, which were initiated by the privately held Facebook in mid-October, about bringing the two together. Those talks, sources on both sides said, are now over. So why did the deal break down?

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Monday, August 4, 2008

lonelygirl15 Is Dead–Long Live EQAL!?!

Last Friday, what BoomTown would call the Web’s first bona fide hit ended, as the lonelygirl15 online series finale took place with 12 video segments uploaded over 12 hours.

Now, apparently, it is time to meet EQAL, a “social entertainment company” that is still essentially the two guys–Greg Goodfried and Miles Beckett–who dreamed up LG15 and also the KateModern Web series.

Except, rather than operating out of their homes on a wing and a prayer, they are now armed with $5 million in funding.

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Monday, June 23, 2008

Veoh’s Dmitry Shapiro Speaks!

Recently, while I was at a conference in Los Angeles, I caught up with Veoh Founder Dmitry Shapiro.

BoomTown will be focusing a lot on online video this year and Veoh is one of the several online video sharing sites–a group of smaller players that includes sites like Joost, Hulu, Dailymotion, Vimeo and others that I like to call not-YouTube.

Still, it is making progress.

Today, the Los Angeles-based Veoh announced that the ABC television network would put full episodes of its hot primetime shows–such as “Ugly Betty” (love it) and “Desperate Housewives” (not so much)–up on the site.

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Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Yahoo Players Burkle, Icahn, Crawford and Also the Web Make Some News (Some, Not So Good)

vfjolie

You would have to have been under a rock not to have heard about the controversial piece in Vanity Fair magazine this month about the troubling personal and professional escapades of former President Bill Clinton since he left office.

And the reason for these disturbing developments, besides Clinton himself? The piece actually placed a good bit of the blame on Clinton’s close friend, grocery magnate and billionaire Ron Burkle, who also has been one of the key directors at Yahoo in its takeover fight with Microsoft.

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

CNET and Jana: The Battle Drags On

cnet

In another micro-move in the fight between activist shareholders and CNET, the Delaware Supreme Court given the thumbs up to a lower court ruling that the Jana Partners group can nominate a slate of directors to the board of San Francisco-based tech news and reviews site.

CNET has been fighting these efforts by Jana–along with Sandell Asset Management, Alex Interactive Media, Spark Capital and Velocity Interactive Group–to nominate two director and expand the board and add more of their own nominees–claiming it was contrary to its bylaw.

Apparently not!

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About Kara

Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »

Ethics Statement

Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.

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