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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

As Traffic Booms, Is HuffPo Ready to Make Some Real Dough?

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For the past few months, the Huffington Post has been on a bit of a tear–both in terms of traffic gains and in its hiring of some big talent for key positions.

Now, those execs are focusing on using that consumer momentum to achieve what has eluded the Huffington Post thus far: Making some serious bank from the privately held news and media site.

Here’s a chat I had with new President and Chief Revenue Officer Greg Coleman about how he is aiming to do just that.

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Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Former Yahoo and AOL Ad Exec Coleman Poised to Join the Huffington Post as President

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.

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Sunday, August 16, 2009

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

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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 essentially takes Facebook Connect and puts it on steroids.

While the use of “social news” will be seen by some as simply a clever PR term, it is an interesting development for both the popular online news site and for the social networking giant.

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Friday, July 17, 2009

MSN Preps for Major Renovation, Focusing on Five Verticals, as It “Does Less Better”

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The edging-ever-closer-to-consummation deal talks with Yahoo about an online advertising and search partnership and the aggressive marketing of its new Bing search service aren’t the only things going on for Microsoft’s online services business.

MSN, Microsoft’s online portal, is also preparing a major redo of what U.S. and, possibly, international consumers will see, as it doubles down on five key content verticals, while cutting back on others.

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Wednesday, May 6, 2009

The AppleTwitter-Equals-iBrangelina Experiment*

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Yesterday, in a BoomTown post about the latest unproven rumors that the world’s most iconic computer company, Apple, was in “late-stage” negotiations to buy Silicon Valley’s latest pretty young thing, microblogging service Twitter, I wrote:

“Oh, the very notion of Apple and Twitter is a Techmeme dream-ticket, sure to be chewed over for days on end. (I once considered doing a post that just said “AppleTwitterAppleTwitterAppleTwitter…” for 1,000 words to see how much idiotic traffic I would get.)”

Well, I reconsidered.

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Thursday, April 9, 2009

If Yahoo’s Going Social, Is Demand Media Back on Its Dance List?

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Last year, Yahoo EVP Hilary Schneider and then-Media Group head Scott Moore had a summery seaside dinner with Demand Media co-founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt in Santa Monica, Calif., right around the corner from the online publishing company’s HQ.

While many speculated that Yahoo could be doing some friendly kibitzing to get a sense of where the eclectic network of general- and special-interest sites was headed, for a possible acquisition, nothing came of it.

But now, a year later, with recent indications that a major strategy for new CEO Carol Bartz will finally follow through on making Yahoo’s massive but disparate service more social, especially in its content offerings, several sources close to the company tell me another look-see at Demand is likelier than ever.

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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Now THIS Is Insufferably Smug!

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Last year, some British blogger dude called our site “insufferably smug.”

We were wounded, of course, but he also always links to us, so we love him.

In other words, if we get the traffic, you can call All Things Digital anything you want–just don’t call us late for dinner.

Thus, in the spirit of April Fool’s Day, we thought we should let this blooming blighter get a photographic version of what insufferably smug truly looks like, Sherlock Holmes-style.

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Monday, December 1, 2008

Huffington Post Nabs $25 Million in Funding–Here’s a BoomTown Interview With Oak Investment’s Fred Harman

The Huffington Post, co-founded by Arianna Huffington, will announce this morning that it has raised $25 million, in a single investment from Oak Investment Partners.

The large round, which was led by Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capitalist Fred Harman, will give the popular online news and blogging site a valuation of “just south of $100 million,” a source said.

The new funding, the Huffington Post’s third, will be used for expansion of its offerings and the hiring of editorial and business talent.

“I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site,” said Harman in an interview with BoomTown last night.

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

Kara Visits Dash!

Earlier this week, I visited Dash Navigation, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based car-navigation device start-up that is being backed to the tune of $42 million by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins.
There, I got a look at the new GPS device called the Dash Express that went on sale exclusively on Amazon (AMZN) today and was also [...]

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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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