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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

A Preview of Time Warner Earnings: Bummer at AOL, Bummer at Magazines–Just a Bummer

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When Time Warner reports its second -quarter earnings tomorrow morning, before the markets open, most Wall Street analysts are not expecting much from the media giant, as it continues to slog toward a rejiggering of itself.

Time Warner–which owns assets like the Warner Bros. movie studio, the AOL online unit, the HBO and Turner cable networks and Time Inc. magazines–is expected to earn 37 cents per share, compared to 72 cents a year ago, according to a poll of analysts from Thomson Reuters.

Revenue is expected to be $6.97 billion, down from $11.56 billion in the same quarter last year. This drop is mostly due to the March spinoff of its cable unit, Time Warner Cable.

But AOL and its magazine unit are expected to continue to drag on Time Warner’s financial performance.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009

The Curse Heard Round the Globe–Well, Actually, Just the Web, But It’s a Start for Yahoo

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San Jose Mercury News columnist Chris O’Brien made a lot of humorous hay at the expense of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz yesterday, in a joke piece called: “Bartz Unveils New &*%! Strategy for Yahoo.”

O’Brien cleverly created a fictional transcript of a Yahoo staff meeting where Bartz–by now, well-known for her salty language–lets loose in an address about just how sick she was of competitors getting all the good press: “So we’re re-branding the company around excessive use of profanity. Our new marketing slogan will be, ‘Yahoo, (expletive) yeah!’”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Meet Peter Currie, Facebook’s New Money Man (For Now)

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Back in the heyday, Peter Currie was the money man to see in Silicon Valley.

As CFO of Netscape Communications, he led the famed browser start-up into history, as the first great Internet rocket ship, when it went public on Aug. 9, 1995.

Rising to insane levels, the stock was ground zero of the Internet gold rush, despite the fact that it had no profits to speak of. But it did have a 23-year-old co-founder and tech wunderkind in Marc Andreessen and a growth trajectory that was astounding.

If you think it sounds somewhat similar to Facebook today–where Currie will now help out as temporary financial adviser after the social-networking site parted ways with its CFO, Gideon Yu, yesterday–you are correct.

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Friday, February 13, 2009

Happy Valentine’s Day: A Geek Love Poem

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, of course, so here’s a lovely sentiment on a T-shirt from the fine folks at ThinkGeek.

(BoomTown is still in an Elmer’s glue coma from making 252 handmade cards with 33 pounds of glitter, which my sons’ school insists on instead of the store-bought kind from Walgreens that I prefer.)

In any case, big, sloppy hugs all around to the readers of All Things Digital.

And remember: Love is bling.

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Tuesday, February 12, 2008

BoomTown Bought a Baker’s Dozen!

In our ongoing quest for the perfect Walt Mossberg T-shirt, we are thrilled with this one, now available for purchase here.
They will join our others, such as this classic “Craplets” T-shirt, modeled below by Walt and Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski in our sacred collection.

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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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