AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Speaks (Though He's a Cagey One)!
Here is a video interview I did today with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong in Germany–really!–where we both were appearing at a digital marketing conference. In it, the former Google (GOOG) exec talked about a...
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AOL Readies Board Picks for Spinoff–While Holding Off Search Suitors (Plus,...
According to sources close to the situation, AOL has been busy selecting the board for the company, which is still set to spin itself off by year’s end–even as it slows down a decision on a new search...
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AOL: Puff Daddy Parties and Cockroaches on NPR
BoomTown is winging across the country right now to New York City to attend, among other things, the analog version of the AOL spinoff from Time Warner (TWX). Videos to come, of course! A ringing of...
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BoomTown Visits AOL's NYC HQ on Eve of Spinoff: CEO Tim Armstrong's Fabulous...
BoomTown is in Manhattan today and my No. 1 stop had to be the AOL HQ downtown. The iconic Internet company–which has gone through more lives than a dozen cats–is poised tomorrow to officially spin...
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Video: New MySpace Co-Presidents Hirschhorn and Jones Talk About the Past...
On Monday, as part of a press hello-there MySpace is doing this week, BoomTown traveled to Los Angeles for the day to finally check in with the new management at the turmoil-plagued company. That...
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The MySpace Sale or Spinoff May Be a Nonstory for Now–But My Barry Manilow...
Like others, without inquiring, BoomTown got an email–from someone who would know–regarding inexplicably whirling rumors of the sale or spinoff of MySpace. Read the “pre-emptive” note: “There is no...
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Why Are AOL Shares Up Today? Maybe for Admitting Bebo Is a Total Bust?
AOL shares pushed higher today than they have been since its November spinoff, rising almost four percent to close at $27.44. And the reason for the rise? One savvy investor suggested it was due to...
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Exclusive: Rhapsody Selects Former MySpace Product Exec as Independent Board...
Tom Andrus, former MySpace product head, has been selected to be the single independent board member of the newly independent Rhapsody digital music service. Andrus (pictured here) joins a pair of...
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Viral Video: Smoke Monster on "Lost" Gets Spinoff! (Plus Letterman's Top Ten...
For fans of the soon-to-end mysterioso television show, “Lost,” two of the top writers on “The Late Show With David Letterman” on CBS (CBS) did a really funny spoof of what happens to the smoke...
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AOL's Longtime PR Head, Primrose, Steps Down
Tricia Primrose (pictured here), AOL’s long-serving communications head, is stepping down from her job, according to a memo sent out by CEO Tim Armstrong to staff. The move is personal, related to her...
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After Some Flashy Investing, Is Andreessen Horowitz's Next Move a Big New Fund?
Since it launched almost exactly a year ago with a $300 million fund, the venture firm of Andreessen Horowitz has cut a rather high-profile path through the Silicon Valley investing community. And...
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Bain Leaves News Corp.'s FAN, Which Will Be Integrated Into MySpace: The...
Adam Bain (pictured here), the well-regarded exec who ran the Fox Audience Network, called FAN, is going to Twitter to head up its early but increasingly aggressive advertising revenue efforts. Here...
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AOL and Facebook Get the New Yorker Treatment
Within the next several weeks, the New Yorker magazine will be publishing big pieces about a pair of digital icons located on the East and West coasts–an assessment of the turnaround at AOL by staff...
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Department of Déjà Vu: Little AOL's Quixotic Quest To Land Giant Yahoo
The last time AOL gobbled up a big company–that would be its audacious grab of Time Warner in the 2000 merger of the century–it ended in tears. Now, it will take all of CEO Tim Armstrong’s...
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Zong's David Marcus Talks About the Next Big Thing in Mobile Payments
There’s no question that mobile is the way an increasing number of payments are made for a variety of virtual goods. Recently, BoomTown visited San Francisco-based Boku, one of the players in the race...
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Motorola Split Set for Jan. 4
Breaking up is, well, a lot of paperwork. Motorola filed the details Tuesday afternoon on its plan to split itself in two. The spinoff of the cellphone unit will take place Jan. 4, with holders getting...
View ArticleMotorola Adds Streaming Content Start-Up to Its Playlist
Motorola announced Wednesday that it is scooping up Zecter, maker of the cloud-based ZumoDrive and ZumoCast services. The technologies use a virtual file system to make cloud-stored content accessible...
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With HP's Raising of the World's Biggest White Flag, Will Jon Rubinstein and...
It wasn’t until dinner this past Sunday night that CEO Léo Apotheker told Todd Bradley, the head of its Personal Systems Group, that he was about to push key parts of Bradley’s huge unit off the...
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Spinning Off HP's PC Business Could Have Worked … Couldn't It?
Newly appointed Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman says that spinning off the company’s PC division — as her predecessor, Léo Apotheker, had planned — was a nonsensical proposition, and that keeping it...
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Expedia Takes Stock as TripAdvisor Gets Ready to Fly the Coop
Now that Expedia’s spinoff of TripAdvisor is imminent, the online travel agency must explain to investors why they should stick with Expedia once its high-flying media business is gone. In April,...
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