Gawker
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acquisitions
Nikki Finke Does a Deal With Mail.com
Mail.com, which launched Movieline.com with the ex-Defamer crew, has purchased Nikki Finke's Deadlinehollywooddaily.com. [AllThingsD]
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Comment by strega: Are they going to make Finkey stop with the caps toldja crap? Are they going to make her print ALL... more » | Other threads
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rumormonger
Could Apple Buy Twitter?
Facebook tried to buy Twitter. Google and Microsoft have been giving the red-hot Internet-messaging startup the eye. But we hear it's Apple that's closest to sealing a deal, possibly for as much as $700 million.
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By Owen ThomasComment by babyjesus: mission hipsters build websites? i thought they were all chillin in smoke shops waiting for the 1st and the 15th... 4 Responses | Other threads
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buybacks
How eBay Can Have $3 Billion in the Bank and Still Be Broke
Look at eBay's books and it wouldn't seem to have money problems. But it's running a garage, unloading would-be Digg competitor StumbleUpon, and hopes to sell Internet phone service Skype. Why? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by HeloiseKapis: Billions of their cash was also spent buying back stock trying to prop up the price (to no avail). Unloading StumbleUpon... 2 Responses | Other threads
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rumormonger
New AOL CEO Wants to Buy Twitter's Web Cool
An AOL tipster tells us incoming CEO Tim Armstrong, the Google sales veteran, wants to buy Twitter, the hot message-broadcasting startup. One problem: He hasn't even started at AOL yet. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Kaskaad Splash: <------ re = camaro ad to the left ... is Bah the new Meh? was there a memo? 2 Responses | Other threads
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Shut Up, Twitter
Will Google Get Shamed Into Buying Twitter?
Real-time is the future of everything, someone wrote three seconds ago. And therefore, Google will pay hundreds of millions of dollars to buy Twitter! Welcome to the way acquisitions are done in Silicon Valley. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by FaceMelter: The idea of Twitter as real-time search is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. 1) Their search kind of... 4 Responses | Other threads
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armchair general
Why Amazon.com Should Buy Digg
Digg needs to sell itself. Kevin Rose's headline-voting site is drowning; the more popular it gets, the more red ink it generates. But who needs a bunch of news stories rated? Here's an idea: Amazon.com. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by ClockOnTheStove: Amazon's reviews can be wickedly entertaining as well. Case in point, Looking For - Best of David Hasselhoff: [www.amazon.com]... 1 Responses | Other threads
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acquisitions
Facebook's failed $500 million offer for Twitter? Totally happened.
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meltdowns
CEO's $500,000 Salary Burns Startup Into Fire Sale
8020 Media hoped to revolutionize the magazine business. Instead, it has circled down the drain, ending up in the hands of shadowy investors after a new CEO with a Condé Nast résumé looted the startup. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by RonnSicTorossian: Well, the history of Fox aside, this post seems to be more smoke than fire. FYI, the Times covered the same... 6 Responses | Other threads
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blogging for dollars
Yahoo Might Buy Tumblr, New York's Cutest Startup
We hear Yahoo is in talks to buy Tumblr, a blogging startup run by 22-year-old David Karp for "low-to-mid eight figures" — which would translate to a small fortune for the New York entrepreneur. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by ZiggyStardust: As a Tumblr user, this makes me really, really sad. 5 Responses | Other threads
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techcrunch
Michael Arrington Wishes He Could Quit Us
TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, left distraught after a stranger spat on him at a tech conference in Munich, promised he'd take February off. Two days in, he's having a hard time leaving the Internet. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by DaTruf: How can we miss him if he won't go away? 2 Responses | Other threads
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acquisitions
The Unbearable Yahoo-AOL-Microsoft Dance
Someone buy something, please. Our New York sighting of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer with Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock missed one: Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, who'd like to unload AOL. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by macbeach: I can't help but think that any deal involving Microsoft will be challenged legally. Nobody's going to complain as... 1 Responses | Other threads
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nerdspotting
Microsoft CEO, Yahoo Chairman Meet in New York
So much for a new boss ending Yahoo's drama. Why did the company's chairman meet Microsoft's Steve Ballmer at the Time Warner Center Thursday, two days after Yahoo named Carol Bartz its new CEO? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Snarkotron: Even more disturbing scenario: Ballmer's wide stance in an airport bathroom led to a rather awkward "anonymous" rendezvous. more » | Other threads
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startups
Dodgeball, Overhyped and Underused, Deserved to Die
Google has axed six services, from Google Video uploads to a shopping-catalog search. But none has sparked more outrage than the closure of Dodgeball.com. Dennis Crowley, the friend-locating service's twentysomething founder, is miffed. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by saythatscool: Can we please get rid of the word Microcelebrity? I'm not blaming Owen because many others use it here too. Being... 10 Responses | Other threads
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sue decker
Yahoo's Depressing Backup Plan
No one wants to buy Yahoo. And the only person who wants to run Yahoo is an insider who helped sink it. Is there any hope left for the beleaguered Web giant? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Beautiful Stranger: Yahoo's impending demise raises an interesting issue which I am sure will delight us all (or at least those of... 7 Responses | Other threads
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black holes
It Costs Digg $5 Million a Year to Run the Internet
Perhaps Digg really is the future of the news business. The headline-discussion site, once an icon of the Web 2.0 movement, is losing millions of dollars a year.
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By Owen ThomasComment by surlybastard: Can someone please explain to me why Digg needs so much money to operate? 5 Responses | Other threads
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gurbaksh chahal
Yahoo millionaire's reality-TV appearance
Gurbaksh "G" Chahal, enriched by Yahoo's $300 million buy of his advertising startup, has taken a star turn on The Secret Millionaire, a reality TV show.
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By Owen ThomasComment by sample032: I guess this means it's time for me to pitch my "rednecks in the castro" idea to Fox. Owen,... 1 Responses | Other threads
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acquisitions
Yahoo's sad, sad state
Another day, another hare-brained scheme to buy Yahoo. This time, the player isn't Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, but former AOL CEO Jon Miller, who now runs a venture-capital fund. But the prospect of a deal seems as far off and fanciful as Microsoft, which spent most of the spring and summer trying to buy Yahoo, coming back to the negotiating table. Miller wants to buy Yahoo, but is having trouble coming up with the money, the Wall Street Journal reports. Is there no one serious who wants to buy this company?
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By Owen ThomasComment by giddieup: what puzzles me is the price he says he can get for yahoo. 20-22. that is almost a 100% premium over... 2 Responses | Other threads
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twitter
Twitter's bad news is a bad business
People who use Twitter, a service which posts short updates to the Web and cell phones, love nothing more than to Twitter about themselves, and the medium they've so enthusiastically adopted. If you go by the Twitterers' collective reporting, every event, from an earthquake in Los Angeles to terrorist bombings in Mumbai, is more notable for the fact that people are writing about it on Twitter than for its inherent interest as news. The dominant narrative of Twitter is the rise of Twitter, the latest force to displace the mainstream media and roil the world's information economy. Too bad the real story of the company is one of top-to-bottom incompetence.
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By Owen ThomasComment by sample032: "...Twitter faces large bills from cell-phone companies which charge it for forwarding text messages to cell phones" Someone from Meebo told... 10 Responses | Other threads
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pownce
Temptress of Silicon Valley shuts down useless site
Earlier this year, Leah Culver appeared on the cover of a tech magazine blowing an enormous pink bubble. But the shrill-voiced San Francisco programmer no longer desires fame — even the modest sort afforded Silicon Valley's microcelebrities. The turnabout seems odd, considering how aggressively she once courted notoriety.
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By Owen ThomasComment by jpontin: "Is it sexist to point this out?" Ah, yeah, Owen - it kind of is. People date in their own... 10 Responses | Other threads
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steve ballmer
Microsoft: "We are done with Yahoo"
Microsoft's chair-hurling 800-pound gorilla slammed the door on talk of a renewed Yahoo acquisition deal at today's shareholder meeting in Bellevue, Washington. "We are done with all acquisition deals with Yahoo ... We did our best. We've moved on." In business, this often means: We'll be back. For now, though, Ballmer said he'd rather cut a deal to serve Live Search results to Yahoo users — as a vendor, not an owner. Why can he speak with such confidence? Because he's already snapped up Yahoo's key search engineers.
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By Paul BoutinComment by mew: Microsoft no longer needs to buy Yahoo!. Ballmer probably knew that their original offer would be rejected. By... 3 Responses | Other threads
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deals
Digg's Kevin Rose interviews former Digg suitor Al Gore
It only takes hearing so many jokes about Al Gore inventing Twitter to figure out that the former vice president has signed up for the microblogging service. Wisely, he's not really participating in the site, just using it to market his websites and announce his interview with Digg founder Kevin Rose, which airs tonight on Current, the Gore-backed cable channel. Current and Digg have been teaming up for a series of election-related events, including a party on election night. But Rose and Gore's acquaintance goes back almost two years. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by giania: Well either he's multi-account spamming or he's already got immitators because I was recently friended by [twitter.com] who is pimping... more » | Other threads
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acquisitions
Wi-Fi's golden age ends as AT&T gobbles Wayport
If wireless Internet access is such a hot technology, why is it such a dud business? I asked that question in Wired five years ago, and I still don't know the answer. Since then, eager-to-please Wi-Fi startups have gone the way of boutique ISP service. AT&T, once broken up by law for being an evil monopoly, has reassembled itself into the dominant telecom brand again — bad service and all. This morning, a press release out of Texas announced that AT&T will acquire privately held Wayport, which operates 10,000 hotspots at locations from McDonald's to the Four Seasons. For $275,000,000 in cash, AT&T will now double its number of Wi-Fi hotspots. I side with the Wall Street Journal's snap analysis: Maybe this will make up in part for all those customers canceling their AT&T home phones. -
earnings
When will Time Warner give up on AOL?
Time Warner has reported its third-quarter results, including AOL's numbers, and they are dismal. Internet-access revenues were down 26 percent, a loss everyone more or less expected, since the dial-up business is moribund. But advertising sales were down 6 percent. AOL management can't blame the market meltdown for this one, since that had barely started by the time the quarter ended. October through December, one assumes, will be much, much worse. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by teleprax: It's getting harder to justify having your search marketing team put any time or effort in to running on engines... more » | Other threads
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rumormonger
If Scott Moore leaves Yahoo, does that mean it's buying AOL?
Scott Moore, the head of Yahoo Media Group, is leaving the company, reports BoomTown's Kara Swisher. A bad sign for the company: Moore ran some of Yahoo's most successful operations, including its news, finance, and sports websites. Why is Moore leaving now, having survived most of Yahoo's annus horribilis with his charm unruffled? The first conclusion I'll jump to: Talks with Time Warner to sell AOL to Yahoo are advancing, and Moore does not like his position in the merged entity. Update: Swisher writes: "Dead wrong guess as usual. Talks are slower than ever. He had the top job over Bill Wilson." Well, why didn't you say so in the first place, Kara?
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By Owen ThomasComment by karaswisher: I forgot you were in remedial reading, Owen. I said it here: "With high-ranking Yahoo execs like Moore gone, it will... 2 Responses | Other threads
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acquisitions
Yahoo, AOL still dating awkwardly
“This is not just unloading AOL for us,” a source close to Time Warner told Kara Swisher. “It is also an important strategic move for our future to get this right.” I love the way anonymous sources lie so convincingly. The truth, Swisher blogs, is both simpler and more boring: Yahoo and AOL don't really like each other. Neither company holds much attraction for the other. Important strategic move means an arranged marriage, forced on both sides by dwindling market value. Which reminds me: We should plot the number of Google engineers whose pending marriages have been "temporarily rescheduled for 2009."
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By Paul BoutinComment by Morphy: AOL and Yahoo are like two people buried up to their necks covered in honey next to an ant hill.... more » | Other threads
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acquisitions
Rackspace gobbles tiny competition to take on Amazon.com
Web hosting? So 1990s. Rackspace is now into "cloud computing." The company has acquired Slicehost, a small but popular virtual private server host, and JungleDisk, an online-storage startup. The deals comes as Rackspace is pushing its Mosso service as an alternative to Amazon.com's computing-power rental offerings. The question is now this, will Rackspace bring their world-class downtime to both services?
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Comment by Electrosphere: Slicehost is a bit of a web 2.0 darling because of their low BS attitude, both in support and their... more » | Other threads
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acquisitions
Samsung pulls out of SanDisk deal
We already took our shot at what was behind Samsung's so-crazy-it-makes-sense attempt to acquire SanDisk. Samsung, we said, has supplied the memory chips for Apple's iPhone since its launch last year. That's why Samsung needs to bulk up to contend with the might of Apple, one of the largest buyers of flash memory. Now that Samsung has dropped its $5.8 billion bid, does that mean we were wrong? Well, yes. Big corporations act like teenagers. These crazy kids will eventually make up, or find other partners. Here's the official breakup note from Samsung CEO Yoon Woo Lee: More » -
exits
Ev Williams didn't Twitter that he fired his CEO
The good news: Jack Dorsey, the handsome programmer ousted as Twitter's CEO yesterday, can put his nose ring back in and stop seeing that CEO coach he hired. The bad news: His cofounder, Ev Williams, who's replacing him as CEO, is sugarcoating Dorsey's exit. Dorsey is not going to be working in Twitter's office, and his coworkers are saying their tearful goodbyes; he's effectively out of the company, though he retains the title of chairman and what is presumably a large stake in the messaging startup. So why did Dorsey get fired? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by meowmeow: That's just good business sense -- Twitter, with its impeccable uptime, would have been a great tool for reliability-critical ambulances. more » | Other threads
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quotable
What Steve Ballmer really said about Yahoo
Kara Swisher calls Steve Ballmer's tendency to run at the mouth "executive Tourette syndrome." Funny because it's true! Microsoft's CEO sent Yahoo's stock soaring yesterday with comments that were widely reported as suggesting renewed interest in buying the company. We'll skip Swisher's blah-blah-blah analysis and let you judge for yourself exactly what Ballmer said: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by MichellePhyleus: Well, now google runs from yahoo, who will be the next player? more » | Other threads
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microsoft
Oh, I dunno, maybe we might buy Yahoo after all, or not
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, after he and his underlings spent months saying they'd moved on from the notion of buying Yahoo, says that a deal still makes "economic sense." Yahoo's stock leapt 17 percent, though it wasn't clear from his remarks, made at a Gartner conference in Florida, whether he was talking about a search partnership or a full acquisition. Either way, Ballmer: Make up your frickin' mind. There are 3,500 Yahoos who are about to lose their jobs, not to mention that cushy post-Microsoft severance package Jerry Yang ginned up. Oh, wait, there's more! More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by pleinad: This is what I read from Fools: Nice one, Ballmer. Market mavens fell right into your trap. They think you're serious.... more » | Other threads
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great moments in hr
With latest acquisition, Automattic now 84 percent white men
Northern California is an enlightened haven of multiculturalism, and globalization requires a diverse workforce. Unless you're a startup, in which case you're going to hire people who look like you. Take, for example, the workforce of Automattic, the maker of WordPress, a blogging program. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by sambauers: Further, it's hard to accept an argument in defence of women's rights from a company that profits from the objectification... 6 Responses | Other threads
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acquisitions
Sun, Novell, Cray could go private
Being a public company isn't all it's cracked up to be. Granting stock options is more expensive than it was before accounting rules changed. Sarbanes-Oxley regulations make reporting financials a miserably bureaucratic process. And investors are afraid of all kinds of risk. Computer makers Cray and Sun and software maker Novell have nearly enough cash on hand to take themselves private, The Register observes. KKR, a buyout firm, got a seat on Sun's board after investing $700 million. Debt markets may be frozen, but these tech stocks are so depressed that private takeovers might not even require the issuance of debt. Forget the stock options: Employees would welcome a deal that keeps some of their jobs. -
acquisitions
AOL cuts Yahoo, even before a deal's done
They say, of fastly dropping markets, that one should never try to catch a falling knife. In trying to sell AOL, Time Warner could be letting a sharp blade fly at Yahoo, the most likely buyer for the troubled Internet business. Will a deal happen? If so, for how much? No one really knows, but everyone wants this clumsy mating dance to be over. Henry Blodget floated and then retracted a rumor that a deal was imminent, for something in the range of $8 billion to $10 billion. More » -
acquisitions
RIM the next takeover target?
Shares of Research In Motion have declined from $148 to $60 in four months, falling along with most tech stocks. The difference between RIM and, say, Yahoo? Microsoft still wants to buy RIM, say some analysts cited by Reuters. Forget Google's still-not-on-the-market Android phones; RIM's BlackBerry is the only real competition for Apple's iPhone. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by raincoaster: Not to mention that for arbitrary reasons the canuck buck is now at 86 cents! 1 Responses | Other threads
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startups
The fire sales to come
Silicon Valley has its own portfolio of toxic investments that no one likes to talk about. The office parks along 101 are littered with the living dead, startups running on fumes of hope and trickles of venture capital. What their future looks like: The $5 million asset sale of Radiance Technologies, a digital-video file-delivery company, to Comcast. An asset sale means that the buyer gets the technology, patents, and servers, while investors are left with the liabilities. Radiance's VCs, who sank $26 million into the company starting in 2000, are unlikely to see much from the purchase. Play that scenario out hundreds of times, and you get a glimpse at what's coming for investors and entrepreneurs. No wonder even sunnily optimistic VCs are losing hope. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by eze: are those undertones of encouragement and sympathy i detect, owen? 2 Responses | Other threads
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deals
Newspaper savior Adrian Holovaty's little Google hitch
We would never imply that Adrian Holovaty, the supremely talented journalist-programmer who's now the CEO of local-news startup EveryBlock, is being cagey or dishonest about his talks with Google, which continued as recently as last weekend. Our theory: He's just shy and bashful, and doesn't like talking about what a hot commodity he is! Sources close to Google confirm that they are very interested in bringing Holovaty, the creator of a set of programming tools called Django, into the Googleplex. There are not one but two hitches, though. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by SanjanaDenby: You can see the details of his grant here- http://www.knightfoundation.org/grants/grant_detail.dot?id=208022 (it was for 2 years, not one) Note that when the... more » | Other threads
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yahoo
Jerry Yang in New York talking AOL deal
The much-talked-about talks between Yahoo and Time Warner to unload AOL? They're definitely on, says a tipster, who also claims Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker are in New York trying to cajole Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes into a deal before Yahoo announces third-quarter earnings later this month. Any Manhattan stargazers care to keep an eye out for him? Update: Kara Swisher now reports Yang has been in New York recently, but not, as our tipster claims, this week She also has lots and lots and lots of speculation about who will run a merged AOL-Yahoo.
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By Owen ThomasComment by jasondupree: Maybe Time Warner will buy Yahoo is a wierd turn of events. 1 Responses | Other threads
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Adrian Holovaty
Newspaper-killing Google aims to hire newspaper-saving programmer
Adrian Holovaty is going to save journalism, darn it, if the industry likes it or not. And he may soon be doing it at Google. The search engine has long suffered from a tin ear in its relations with writers and editors — the people who create the content it indexes. Holovaty gained fame for linking up Google Maps with local crime statistics to create chicagocrime.org, one of the first mapping mashups. And he gained cred in the journalism world by melding programming and reportage at the Washington Post. Most recently, he's been pursuing the same goal at his own local-news startup, EveryBlock, which he funded by winning a contest held by the Knight Foundation. And now Google wants to buy Holovaty's startup, we hear. Holovaty says that he's had no conversations with Google, but did have lunch with a friend at Google's campus last week, which he stresses was "a social matter." The effort to buy his venture — there's no "deal," Holovaty tells us — has hit some kind of unusual hitch. It's not clear what the holdup is. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by sggrf: as I read this any conversation with Google leaves Adrian looking cagey. more » | Other threads
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layoffs
eBay buys Bill Me Later, lays off 1,000-plus employees
News reports confirm the rumors we heard over the weekend about eBay's layoffs. Details are scant, but our sources say some departments are losing as much as 22 percent of their staffing. Development managers have been told to expect to lose 1,700 "train seats" next year. That's programmer lingo for weeks of developers' time; one train seat is three weeks. Do the math: That means at least 100 programmers are losing their jobs in the cuts. Adding insult to injury: eBay is spending $1 billion in cash and stock to acquire three companies — payments firm Bill Me Later, and two Danish classifieds sites. What a stupid PR move, to combine the two announcements: Those getting laid off will wonder how eBay has money to spend on buying companies but not paying employees.
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By Owen ThomasComment by HeloiseKapis: True, eBay's core business is stagnated, but a lot of blame for this lies on the shoulders of Meg Whitman... 1 Responses | Other threads
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mergers
Liberty Media ready to pay $1.42 billion for AOL dialup business
Liberty Media CEO John Malone told the Financial Times his company is ready to swap its $1.42 billion stake in Time Warner in order to acquire AOL's dialup business. There's just one holdup. "Time Warner still needs to divide the business," Malone complained to the FT. Though it's been more than two years since Time Warner decided to turn AOL into an online advertising concern and abandon the Internet service provider business, AOL won't be completely split until early 2009. Malone isn't the only exec impatient for Time Warner's book keepers to hurry it up. AOL CEO Randy Falco was overheard last week griping: "When is New York going to sell us?"
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Comment by macbeach: Is it possible that AOL is finding the dia-up business more valuable than they first thought? There are many people in... more » | Other threads
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