BoomTown » Times Square

Flying the Digitally Friendly Skies: Gogo, Google and the Facebook PR Guy in 17D

Kara Swisher — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:11:20 +0000

So, BoomTown–who cannot be unplugged from the matrix for very long without breaking into a cold sweat–was pretty excited to have free Wi-Fi on my Virgin America flight to Washington, D.C., early this morning.

The service from Gogo Inflight Internet is free since earlier this week until Jan. 15, courtesy of Google (GOOG), on Virgin, as well as at 47 airports. It usually costs anywhere from $6 to $13.

Like the search giant, other Web companies–presumably wanting to goose usage and, more to the point, their brands–have also leaped in.

Delta has a promotion with eBay (EBAY) on several hundred planes for a week around Thanksgiving, and Yahoo (YHOO) is footing the bill for anyone using computers or smartphones in Times Square in New York for one year.

Pretty much what the government and big cable and wireless companies should be doing, but let’s not look a digital gift horse in the mouth.

So far on the flight, the Internet has been pretty solid, although video plays even slower than my Comcast (CMCSA) connection at home.

Also, electricity on the flight has been in and out; when it doesn’t work, it pretty much negates Internet use on a long flight.

But more interesting, as most who use the Web in the air seem to feel, is the ability to make a lot of online connections, including with people on the same plane.

While I was no fan of the goofy seat-to-seat connections offered on some airlines, I did get an email from a Facebook public relations guy sitting in the row behind me on the same flight asking if I wanted to meet the social networking site’s DC staff.

Without ever seeing him I now have a meeting on Monday with them, so–apparently–mission accomplished!

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Stock Stronger as Yahoo Preps to Report Next Week–But Employee Departures (and Return of Yodeling!) Rattle

Kara Swisher — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:39:11 +0000

In one week, Yahoo will report its third-quarter earnings, after the market closes.

And so far, its stock is showing signs that investors are hoping for better days ahead for the Internet giant.

Shares are up 8.5 percent for the month, almost 13 percent for the last three months and almost 39 percent since the beginning of the year.

While that’s not the rocket ship Google (GOOG) has been on–the search giant’s stock is up 70 percent since January, which includes a big boost recently on expectations of a strong earnings report tomorrow–it’s clear investors are hoping an improvement in the online advertising market will boost Yahoo’s fortunes.

Wall Street is expecting $1.12 billion in net revenue and seven cents in earnings per share from Yahoo (YHOO)–and a better performance than that could boost the stock.

In fact, a pair of bullish analyst reports that came out today predicted just that.

Broadpoint AmTech analyst Benjamin Schachter raised his price target to $21 a share, noting that after the search and online advertising partnership deal closes, Yahoo “should be meaningfully smaller and leaner, but should also be a significantly more profitable company.”

And Benchmark Co. analyst Clayton Moran moved Yahoo from hold to buy, with a price target of $20.

But a string of recent exec departures in Yahoo’s advertising units are making some within the company’s ranks slightly worried.

The departures include Jim Schinella, the company’s SVP for corporate partnerships, in September.

And yesterday, Glam Media announced that it had nabbed Josh Jacobs as SVP of Brand Advertising Products & Marketing. At Yahoo, Jacobs was a key exec in its display ad platform unit.

Many inside the company expect more departures in the ad and engineering arena at Yahoo, pointing out that many big stock packages given to hold onto talent are about to vest.

In addition, once Yahoo’s search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft (MSFT) is approved, as it is likely to be by the end of the year, hundreds of Yahoo engineers will get the choice of moving to Microsoft.

Some will, of course, but some simply do not want to go and many Silicon Valley companies and start-ups BoomTown spoke to report seeing more resumes recently from Yahoo staff.

There is little Microsoft can do to stop possible leakage of tech talent from Yahoo until the deal is approved, since the companies cannot do any integration until it is.

Perhaps worst of all, there seems to be nothing Yahoo can do to stifle its proclivity to yodel, which I begged Yahoo execs to forgo in its recent $100 million “It’s Y!ou” marketing push.

No such luck!

Yesterday, Yahoo launched its online Yodel Studio (no, I am not kidding), where you can record your own yodel in various music genres, like, um, rap.

Yahoo held a kickoff event in New York’s Time Square yesterday–however did I manage to miss it, since I was in Manhattan?–with a passel of celebrity yodelers like Jewel, as well as one in London’s Covent Garden.

Today, there is a yodel event in Mumbai, India. Bollywood yodeling anyone?

Here is a link to the famous Yahoo yodel, by the way, if you are so inclined.

And here is a video of the Times Square event, and also the very memorable Yahoo commercial of Taylor Ware, after she won the Yahoo National Yodel Challenge contest in 2003.

Some things never change (even if they should!).

The Yahoo Ad Campaign Creative We'd Like to See

Kara Swisher — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:41:13 +0000

Yahoo introduced its new $100 million marketing and branding campaign in New York today with “It’s Y!ou” as the new motto, making use of the Internet giant’s famous exclamation point.

Sure, it’s clever and all, but BoomTown felt the need to jump in and help Yahoo (YHOO), since our posts have been a little tough when it has come to the Silicon Valley icon’s tumultuous ride over the last two years.

So, while CEO Carol Bartz (pictured above as a giant lady on the Nasdaq Jumbotron in Times Square) explained–as reported by MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka–that “Yahoo is the only site where you when you wake up in the morning and you want to know what’s going on everywhere about everything, you can find it one place,” I’d say there’s more to the brand that just that!

In fact, there’s Bartz herself, a sassy and ofttimes salty exec whose pugnacious utterances have become legend quickly.

Today, for example, when asked about a comparison with its search rival, she noted, “Why not be cynical about fricking Google?”

That was mild in comparison to her cursing me out at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference when she thought I was insinuating she was too old to be an Internet exec (you can see that exchange in the video below).

Thus, please take a gander at our branding effort for Yahoo below.

(While Yahoo has Ogilvy & Mather to do its work, ATD has the very clever Photoshop stylings of Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski to work our marketing magic.)

Best of all, you can switch out the picture and moniker to denote any Yahoo foe–Google (GOOG); Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer if he does not behave in the new search-partnership deal; billionaire investor and Yahoo board member Carl Icahn; and more!

Fondly dedicated to Carol–and the rest of the Yahoo crew, especially Judy–here’s our ad (click on the image to make it larger):

And here is Bartz in action at D7, cussing me out at 00:57 in the video of the interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

BoomTown on Yahoo's Tech Ticker: Apple, Blogging, MicroHooGoogOl and the Econalypse

Kara Swisher — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:00:38 +0000

Last week, an obviously jet lagged (and badly dressed, as some troglodyte commenters on Yahoo pointed out, but it was snowing!) BoomTown visited Henry Blodget at Yahoo’s Tech Ticker studio in Times Square in Manhattan to talk about a range of digital topics.

The video interviews included: How well Apple (AAPL) will do without Steve Jobs on deck; whether blogging reporting and professionalism standards need to rise; when Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL will stop dancing around various deals; and finally, how the recession is impacting Silicon Valley.

The short answers: Fine; yes; the anticipation is killing us; and badly, but tech will get through it with some pluck and baling wire!

But if you want a longer explanation, watch the videos.

Apple and Steve Jobs:

Blogging Standards:

A Deal for MicroHooGoogOl?:

The Recession’s Impact in Silicon Valley:

BoomTown's 2009 Predictions: We Don't Know Jack (Except for AppleAppleAppleApple)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:17:02 +0000

Oh, I’m sorry, is this the part where BoomTown is supposed to make a list of some sort of what I like and don’t like, what’s hot and what’s not, what’s going to happen and such to all the various players in the digital space?

I don’t think so.

Why? Well, when I have in the past or have read them from others, it’s a lot like Nostradamus. You can read into it anything you want.

For instance: Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs wrote a public letter today that essentially says he is not dying, as many speculated he was last week–without a trace of proof.

And, presto-chango, the thickest in the blogosphere then does another twisteroo and uses it as confirmation that he is in indeed sick and it was the true reason for his Macworld keynote pullout, even though Jobs says no such thing in the letter.

Or, more mundanely, I write: “Mobile will be bigger than ever.”

Well, to start, it is a kind of duh-prognostication. Plus it is essentially meaningless, since obviously more folks on the planet means more cellphones.

Or, what about: “Twitter/Facebook/Digg/Fill-In-The-Overhyped-Start-Up will sell to a major media giant.”

Okay, maybe, if any of those major media stocks were not in the toilet and their execs decided to do another Bebo/CNET/Fill-In-The-Overhyped-Start-Up cash belly flop like last year.

You get the idea.

But the real reason I am not inclined to go all Miss Cleo is simple: I have no idea what is going to happen and neither does anyone, even in their heedless guessing.

Did we imagine Microsoft (MSFT) would launch a hostile attack on Yahoo (YHOO)? No, we did not.

Did we guess that Google (GOOG) stock would tank to half its value in a massive U.S. economic collapse? Nope, sister.

Did we know that Apple apps would take off like gangbusters, even as rumors of Jobs’s imminent demise would too? Sorry, but we didn’t, including you in the back there insisting you did.

Did we foresee that the insane valuations for Web 2.0 companies like Facebook and others would drop like the ball in Times Square on New Year’s?

Wait, we got that one right.

Here are the only predictions I can make, which is that these will be the topics that everyone will be chattering about in tech in 2009:

AppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleApple
AppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleApple
AppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleApple
AppleSteveIsSickAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleApple
AppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleAppleApple

Also:

TwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitter
TwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitter
TwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitter
TwitterTwitterTwitterDidYouKnowSteveIsSick?TwitterTwitterTwitter
TwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitter

And:

Yahoo!

Wait, that’s just me.