All Things Digital

Skip to main content.

BoomTown

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

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

2008money

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.

Read More »

Friday, May 29, 2009

Bartz’s (S)mash Note to Ballmer: The Photographic Proof

img_0004

If a search and advertising partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft is ever struck, perhaps a little CEO-to-CEO note-passing should get some credit.

Yesterday, we wrote about the purple Post-It that Bartz passed to Ballmer via the makeup person in the D: All Things Digital Green Room.

Here’s the photographic proof!

Read More »

Monday, October 27, 2008

Peter Kafka Takes On the Mediamorphosis in New ATD MediaMemo Blog

Oh, BoomTown could not resist making the obvious literary pun on the debut of Peter Kafka’s new daily blog, MediaMemo, on AllThingsD.com.

I am referencing, of course, Franz Kafka’s famous 1915 novella, “Metamorphosis,” about a man who turns into a bug–except that the transformation is fraught with so much more meaning.

And thus it will be in Peter’s column, as the most excellent writer and reporter plunges into the topic–as he writes in his first explanatory post–of “the ongoing battle between the established media business and the technology that is reshaping it day by day.”

Read More »

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Live From New York: ATD Hires Peter Kafka to Pen a New Media and Advertising Blog

Although we did not raid the offices of Silicon Alley Insider and “steal” Peter Kafka, as the fanciful SAI kingpin Henry Blodget alleges–had it been a raid, BoomTown would have properly hog-tied Blodget so he could not make such spurious allegations!–it is true that SAI’s current managing editor (pictured here) will be coming to work for us at AllThingD.com soon.

He will write a daily still-unnamed new media blog from New York City, starting at the end of October.

Read More »

Monday, June 30, 2008

The Entire D6 Interview With News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch (Part 1 of 6)

Sorry for the delay, but we’ll finally start posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May in their entirety.

Kicking off the proceedings will be what most of the attendees at the conference told us they considered their favorite interview, which Walt Mossberg and I did with News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch.

Here’s Part 1 of 6 of the Murdoch interview.

Read More »

Friday, April 11, 2008

MicroHoo: The Graphical Story

Here is a great chart from The Wall Street Journal that kind of says it all.
Start stacking them up in your mind like your kid’s Legos and it gets interesting (click on the image to make it larger):

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Read More »

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Yahoo Shows Some Leg

Finally.
But, I am sorry to say, probably much too late.
Still, it was nice to see a relatively bold statement from Yahoo (YHOO) leadership yesterday about its growth prospects and plans, a clearer statement of purpose it would have been much, much nicer to see a year ago.
And the assessment of Yahoo executives, who filed documents [...]

Read More »

Monday, March 17, 2008

Kara Visits ECO:nomics

Last week, I was in Santa Barbara at the Bacara Resort for The Wall Street Journal’s ECO:nomics: Creating Environmental Capital conference, which described itself as a “CEO-level view of the rapidly developing relationship between the environment and the bottom line.”
Topics that were delved into via interviews were wide-ranging: “Sales Job: Will Consumers Spend to Go [...]

Read More »

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Original Content on the Web Does Work

The thudding failure of the online-born “quarterlife” original series on network television Tuesday night, garnering some of the worst ratings in NBC’s history (after experiencing a declining Internet audience too), was loudly touted yesterday as a possible impediment to online-to-offline dreams of original content creation that Hollywood has been nurturing.

Well, it’s not. One show, which just did not work, is in no way representative of a trend, any more than the box office failure of the movie “Snakes on a Plane” meant online marketing and hype was finished.

Read More »

From the Department of Correcting “Crazy Google/Yahoo Rumors”

To: Rumormongers
From: BoomTown
Re: Wacky–even by Google standards–stock market schemes
Google (GOOG) –let me get this straight–is apparently considering buying just under 20% of Yahoo (YHOO) shares at some elevated price, according to a post on TechCrunch yesterday, “although the goal isn’t so much to close the deal, which would almost certainly be opposed by U.S. regulatory [...]

Read More »

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

More on Retention Packages and Enhanced Severance at Yahoo

If you are feeling a little déjà vu about the news BoomTown broke this morning about new retention packages and enhanced severance benefits for Yahoos, in order to keep them from bolting in the face of Microsoft’s unsolicited bid (and to give them a payout in case it works), you are not wrong.

According to several [...]

Read More »

MarketWatch Video: New Home Technology, Including Diamond-Powered Faucets!

Eek, diamonds are now apparently being used in a new water-delivery system that debuted at the International Builder’s Show in Orlando, Fla., this week.
For those who do not know it, BoomTown is a closet–get it??–home renovation freak and once had a column in The Wall Street Journal called “Home Economics.” (Here is a link to [...]

Read More »

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Rupe-a-Dope

BoomTown is suffering from Rupert Murdoch déjà vu.

Back in July, I actually wrote a post about the head of News Corp. (owner of Dow Jones and this site) in which the first sentence was: “MySpace and Yahoo should merge.”

I was referencing a very interesting comment that Murdoch made in an interview in June of 2007 with Time’s Eric Pooley.

In it, he floated the idea of trading a 25 percent stake of Yahoo for MySpace.

Read More »

Friday, February 8, 2008

This Just In: Reports of Yahoo’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated (Today)

The Yahoo board meeting, via phone, went off today without a resolution, as BoomTown surmised in an earlier post today.
See this report on the telephonic meeting from our excellent reporting colleagues at The Wall Street Journal, Kevin Delaney and Matthew Karnitschnig.
As you can see, the breathless reporting that Yahoo’s fate was to be decided today [...]

Read More »

Under Pressure: Meet Roy Bostock

Don’t miss a terrific Wall Street Journal profile of Yahoo’s new non-executive Chairman Roy Bostock, penned by the always excellent Kevin Delaney in today’s paper. The longtime ad exec has definitely his work cut out for him, given Microsoft’s unsolicited $31 per share bid last week.

In it, Delaney outlines the stakes for Bostock, who was installed only minutes before the Here’s-Johnny! call from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, demanding to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion or else.

Read More »

Latest BoomTown Videos

More Videos »

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.

Read more »