by Marisa Taylor in Voices at 9:45 am PT
MediaMaster, a free Web-based application that allowed users to upload music from their hard drives and listen to it online or on their mobile devices, made the decision to shutter its doors, and explained on its Web site that "it is not possible to keep a service like this up for free without some sort of large scale userbase to get ads to pay for it." Read more »
by John Paczkowski in Digital Daily at 9:30 am PT
Motorola Co-chief Executive Sanjay Jha says the company is “completely committed to making [its] handset business work.” The question is: CAN the handset business be made to work? Judging from the company’s latest earnings, the answer would appear to be a categorical "no."
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by Kara Swisher in BoomTown at 9:01 am PT
As BoomTown reported earlier today, I just got sent the entire internal email--penned and just sent out by AOL CEO Randy Falco--about the replacement of its Platform-A President Lynda Clarizio with former Yahoo top advertising sales exec Greg Coleman.
An AOL press release has also gone out about the move, made to turbocharge the flagging fortunes of its online ad business.
"No doubt Greg is joining Platform-A at a difficult time," writes Falco in the memo. "The deepening economic recession is affecting every corner of the economy, including our own."
Translation: Yahoo was kindergarten! Get to work pronto, Greg! Read more »
by Peter Kafka in MediaMemo at 8:45 am PT
Amazon is set to unveil Kindle 2.0 next Monday at a New York press event. But how many of the original e-book readers has it sold already? Don't ask Jeff Bezos and company. But Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney figures Amazon sold 500,000 devices last year and that the Kindle will be a billion-dollar business by next year. Read more »
by Kara Swisher in BoomTown at 8:30 am PT
The game of executive musical chairs among Web companies keeps on going, with sources telling BoomTown that AOL ad head Lynda Clarizio will be departing the online service and be replaced by former high-ranking Yahoo advertising exec Greg Coleman.
The move at AOL, which has been in the works for only a week, could be announced as early as today, although I have been hearing rumors of such a development since late last week.
Both AOL's content and communications units have been getting an overhaul of late, and now it seems it is time for its lackluster ad business.
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by John Paczkowski in Digital Daily at 7:45 am PT
In September 2006, a three-minute video featuring a group of teenagers harassing a boy with Down Syndrome was posted to Google Video Italia. Notified of it presence, Google quickly removed the video. But not quickly enough. The clip was viewed some 12,000 times before it was pulled. Enough times to inspire a two-year investigation and now, the trial of four Google executives on criminal charges of defamation and breach of privacy. Talk about blaming the tool for the way it is used....
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by Peter Kafka in MediaMemo at 7:41 am PT
The blog network notion, which seemed to make plenty of sense a couple of years ago, looks a lot less appealing now. Latest evidence: Pajamas Media, which was supposed to sell ads for a group of right-leaning bloggers like Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin, is shutting down its ad network. Read more »
by John Paczkowski in Digital Daily at 6:35 am PT
Investors already know Motorola has a grim future. This morning they found out just how grim it’s to be. The company today posted a $3.6 billion loss in the fourth quarter, suspended its dividend and projected further losses in the first three months of 2009. Worse, it said phone shipments in its cellphone division--crucial to turnaround plans--fell by half last quarter. Read more »
by Peter Kafka in MediaMemo at 4:47 am PT
Last spring, RealNetworks announced plans to spin off its fast-growing casual games business into a separate company. That's not going to happen in the midst of a meltdown, and today the company formally acknowledged the reality. But keep an eye on Real, which has a pile of cash and may be in an acquiring mood at some point this year. Read more »
by Eric Savitz in Voices at 4:45 am PT
Good chip company, bad chip company: While SanDisk shares plummet 14 percent following a much-worse-than-expected Q1 outlook, Atheros Communications is up nearly five percent in after-hours trading at $12.68.
During a conference call with analysts following a better-than-expected fourth-quarter report, wireless chip maker Atheros forecast Q1 sales to fall 12 to 18 percent, which would be a range of $80.61 million to $86.5 million. Read more »
by Kara Swisher in BoomTown at 12:58 am PT
The fine folks at Barely Political, who made the famous--infamous, really--Obama Girl online videos that went viral during the presidential election, have moved onto the tech sector for their comic inspiration.
The latest Next New Networks comedy site is called Barely Digital and is up in beta, with later plans to roll out a full network.
Here are two of the first video efforts. Read more »
by John Paczkowski in Digital Daily at 12:00 am PT
SanDisk CEO Eli Harari says the company is “very disappointed” with its fourth-quarter bottom-line results, which doesn’t even begin to describe the way the company’s investors must be feeling right now. They had expected the flash memory card maker to report a fourth-quarter net loss of 60 cents a share on revenue of $766.7 million. Instead, it reported an adjusted net loss of $1.65 a share. Read more »
by Kara Swisher in BoomTown at 7:02 pm PT
It looks like Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is going to have to up the ante to keep BoomTown from getting its mitts on the company's internal memos.
Earlier today, this column broke the news that Yahoo PR head Jill Nash was headed out the door and mentioned that Bartz had been dangling cash rewards to Yahoos to turn in other employees who leaked information.
Good gracious--it's like "Oz," except for the free lattes!
Well, she has to do better than the $1,000 bounty she mentioned in a recent email, since I got sent the memo sent out by Nash to Yahoo staff about her departure in its entirety pretty quickly. Read more »
by Peter Kafka in MediaMemo at 3:43 pm PT
Is Hulu coming to your iPhone? Or your iPod? That would be pretty sweet! But contrary to what some of us thought when we saw the video service's first-ever TV ad yesterday, it's not happening anytime soon. In retrospect, the tentacle should have tipped us off. Read more »