by Beth Callaghan in Digital Daily at 2:00 pm PT
It was an eventful week--a new President-elect, Yahoo still playing the field with no takers, and the hovering recession beginning to hit a little harder, a little closer to home. It was hard to keep the storylines straight, so let's approach it thematically.
Election 2008
Whether or not those voting machines malfunctioned or miscounted votes, Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States, much to the chagrin of comedians like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who--since the beginning of the McCain/Palin partnership--were handed once-in-a-lifetime material. Between the brilliant Saturday Night Live parody sketches of (and by) both Palin and McCain, and Obama's victory speech, the other big winner (by a mile) was YouTube. Read more »
by John Paczkowski in Digital Daily at 4:10 pm PT
This is pretty funny. Mark Papermaster, the 26-year IBM (IBM) veteran being sued by his employer for taking a job at Apple, is convinced Big Blue’s suit is entirely without merit. Why? Apple doesn’t compete with IBM and never has.
“I do not recall a single instance of Apple being described as a competitor of IBM during my entire tenure at IBM,” Papermaster said in a court filing. Now, I know Apple’s famous “1984″ ad is a few decades old now and and memories of the company’s 1984 Annual Shareholders meeting are well faded, even at Apple. But surely someone, somewhere in Cupertino must recall CEO Steve Jobs’s comments at that meeting. Read more »
by Kara Swisher in BoomTown at 2:55 pm PT
Let's get this out of the way: BoomTown completely missed Lionel Richie perform, cooling our heels outside behind the rope line at the MySpace party in San Francisco last night.
Major bummer.
That aside, I did finally get in and did a video at the rocking event, which the SoCal-based social-networking site threw after the day's proceedings at the Web 2.0 Summit.
It was the scene of a lot of wild partying, with a lot of swinging and packed most of the night, even as the supposed gloom of the econalypse was settling over Silicon Valley.
Read more »
by Peter Kafka in MediaMemo at 2:54 pm PT
EMI Music Group PLC, which seems to have been going through a continuous reorg since private equity firm Terra Firma bought it in the summer of 2007, has announced yet another one. But the more important message EMI delivered today was to the company's investors, who have lent it some $5.8 billion: "Don't worry! We've got plenty of cash!" Read more »
by John Paczkowski in Digital Daily at 12:15 pm PT
Discussing the latest in Sprint Nextel’s sad little parade of earnings announcements with analysts this morning, CEO Dan Hesse said the company has “yet to turn the corner” on the road to recovery. Looking over the company’s financials today, I’d say the corner to which he refers isn’t even in sight yet. If anything, Sprint appears to be heading down one of those bleak midwestern straightaways--in this case, jammed with the traffic of its fleeing subscribers.
Read more »
by Kara Swisher in BoomTown at 11:56 am PT
Is it just me or does it feel like the whole odd public back-and-forth between Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is beginning to mimic the endless loop of the deeply annoying relationship between Ross Geller and Rachel Green on the long-running NBC television hit, "Friends"?
At least in their star-crossed hijinks, Ross and Rachel smooched from time to time in between the juvenile bickering and push-me-pull-you antics.
But with Yang and Ballmer, it has been only juvenile bickering and push-me-pull-you antics 24/7, which is why BoomTown wishes they would just get a room.
A conference room to negotiate in, of course! (Get your minds out of the gutter!) Read more »
by Eric Savitz in Voices at 10:07 am PT
Blockbuster shares are selling off sharply today due to concerns about the company's financial outlook for the near future. Slim DVD releases, unheard-of Olympics viewership and remodeling plans--including one called "Rock the Block"--are factors that have negatively affected the bottom line for this year. In order to tighten the company's belt and get through its current rut, CFO Thomas Carey suggests putting some capital projects on hold for a while. In other words, "Block the Rock." Read more »
by John Paczkowski in Digital Daily at 9:15 am PT
Shares of Yahoo are slipping deep into the mud today after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer very publicly dismissed suggestions that the company might “revisit a possible acquisition” of the much diminished Internet portal. Yahoo is trading at well below $12--$11.86--as I write this, having plummeted nearly 15 percent on Ballmer’s remarks. Read more »
by John Paczkowski in Digital Daily at 8:33 am PT
You can stop gloating now, Steve. Though Apple shipped more iPhones this summer than RIM shipped Blackberries, its share of the U.S. market is still dwarfed by its Canadian rival. According to Strategy Analytics, Apple accounted for just 5.7 percent of the mobile phone market in the states in the third quarter while Research in Motion claimed nearly twice as much. Read more »
by Peter Kafka in MediaMemo at 7:57 am PT
The conventional wisdom is that the digital ad market started sputtering this fall. But Disney CFO Tom Staggs hints that it has been weakening for much of the year. So what does that mean for 2009? Read more »