In the ongoing game of Internet exec musical chairs, Greg Coleman, who has been a top exec at both Yahoo and AOL, is poised to become president of the Huffington Post, as well as chief revenue officer, several sources said.

The deal for Coleman to come on board at the privately held online news site–which has grown significantly over the last year and just added well-known online media exec Eric Hippeau as CEO–came together only recently.

Read More »

Apparently, if you want to think about the growth of the Huffington Post as a culinary dish, perhaps today’s replacement of CEO Betsy Morgan with longtime online media powerhouse Eric Hippeau might appear under the Emeril Lagasse cooking cliché: Let’s kick it up a notch!

Both co-founders of the online media site, Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, said as much in interviews I did with them–as well as Hippeau–this afternoon.

“The deal is that we simply have been growing so fast that we needed more firepower to accelerate in expanding the site and monetizing it,” said Huffington, who is also editor-in-chief of the news site.

Read More »

While in Los Angeles today at the AlwaysOn OnHollywood conference, BoomTown ran smack into blogging empress Arianna Huffington.

She was there to give a speech called “Video Killed the Radio Star…But Can the Web Actually Save Journalism?”

Her answer was a decided yes, especially with great journalists working online, such as the new managing editor of the Huffington Post the mega-blog has just hired.

That would be former CNET Networks Editor-in-Chief Jai Singh, who quit the company last year after a dozen-year run.

Read More »

Goodness gracious, make it stop!

You must know by now how much BoomTown loves internal Yahoo memos. But this is getting ridiculous.

It’s been like a flash flood after a long drought at Sunnyvale HQ today, as Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz turns on the firehose of a whole lot of communicating.

“I know you guys have reorg fatigue,” wrote Bartz in the latest email to employees about the management reorganization finally announced this morning.

Also memo fatigue at All Things Digital HQ, if you can believe it.

Read More »

Earlier today, BoomTown broke the stunning-for-blogs news that ContentNext, owner of the popular online digital media news site paidContent, was being bought by the Guardian Media Group for about $30 million in an earn-out acquisition.

But the deal–which comes after the mid-May sale of Ars Technica to Condé Nast for a reported $25 million–begs the question of which tech blog might be next to be acquired.

And, after much noisy poking around today, BoomTown is giving the nod to one of the sector’s larger and splashier sites: TechCrunch.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

Since everyone and their mother saw fit to grab and post BoomTown’s video of our interview last month with Ars Technica’s founder Ken Fisher in the wake of its acquisition by Conde Nast to be announced today, we thought we should post it too–since we did it!

Boston-based Ars, one the largest and longest-running tech blogs, will become part of CondeNet’s Wired Digital group.

Read More »

Another day, another tech blog eruption featuring Michael “The Volcano” Arrington of TechCrunch and, this time, Wired’s Betsy “Ain’t-Backing-Down” Schiffman.

When last we checked in with Arrington, he was elegantly telling Chris Shipley that her longstanding tech conference might want to take a dirt nap. Specifically: “Demo needs to die.”

But that’s not all!

Read More »

Earlier this week, BoomTown posted our speaker list for the sixth edition of D: All Things Digital, which will take place in a few weeks–May 27 to 29, to be exact–in Carlsbad, Calif.

Just recently, we added Jerry Yang, CEO and co-founder of Yahoo, and now he is being joined onstage at the conference by Yahoo President Sue Decker (pictured here in a lovely Wall Street Journal dot-drawing).

Read More »

When it reports its first quarter earnings this afternoon, CNET Networks will also announce a much-expanded editorial and advertising relationship with Yahoo that will give the tech news site broad distribution on the highly trafficked Internet portal.

CNET and Yahoo have had content licensing deals in the past, in which some CNET content has been featured in the tech areas of Yahoo.

Read More »

“Demo needs to die,” said TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington yesterday.
Oh, my. Oh, dear. Not more bloody tangoing!?!
The pugnacious tech blogger–who was last seen slapping around other tech bloggers who deigned to also raise money for their ventures, much as he has been doing–made this classy statement in an interview with Daniel Terdiman of CNET’s [...]

Read More »

After dissident shareholders, led by Jana Partners, landed one right in the kisser to the board and management of CNET Networks yesterday–releasing a 38-page report that essentially called the company’s leadership incompetent, the tech news and review site gave the literary effort a kiss-off of its own.
First, rather politely, CNET said that Jana’s proposed strategies, [...]

Read More »

Unfortunately, for CNET (CNET) Networks, it’s not an April Fool’s joke, but more lump of coal to the tech news and review site’s management and board.
Today, a group of very obviously stubborn activist investors, who have been seeking to gain CNET board seats and make other major changes at the company to boost its moribund [...]

Read More »

So what prompted TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington to pen a pugnacious piece on how blogs should not be raising so much venture capital and instead roll themselves into a “Dream Team,” with the unusual title of “More Bloggers Raising Money. Here Comes Politics. And Here Comes My Rant” yesterday?
Well, besides garnering Arrington a big dollop [...]

Read More »

How far ahead of the political curve is our D: All Things Digital conference?
So far that we put all those bendy-straws-in-the-wind television pundits to shame!
Case in point: At D4, we invited former Vice President Al Gore to come just before everyone decided he was the best thing since organic whole-wheat sliced bread.
And [...]

Read More »