Media

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer last night spoke before an invite-only crowd at Fortune's Most Powerful Women event. And although she offered up some details during her interview, she sidestepped any opportunity to fully outline her company's plans.

Not surprisingly, Mayer focused much of her discussion on mobile. The mobile market is growing rapidly, and shareholders are responding favorably to Mayer's claims that the space is integral to Yahoo's future growth. At a recent earnings call, Mayer spent a generous amount of time discussing mobile and why she believes Yahoo is well-positioned to capitalize. She did it … Read more

Sexy is in the eye of the beholder. The beholder of the whip, that is.

Many Western news sites couldn't contain their titters after they heard that China's official Communist mouthguard -- the People's Daily -- announced that North Korea's cherubic-faced youth, Kim Jong-Un, had been voted "The Sexiest Man Alive."

No, he wasn't voted by the People's Daily. This wasn't even People magazine. It was that sensitive publication dedicated to the human image, the Onion.

As the Associated Press pictured it, the People's Daily decided to honor this momentous … Read more

Those watching "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley" will have learned many things over its first three weeks.

They'll have learned that you can't get money from VCs just by knowing their phone numbers and fluttering your acronyms. They'll have learned that doing a start-up is so hard that you need to party a lot. And they'll have learned that date-cheating just isn't on if you're a lifecaster.

Last night's Episode 4 began with Sarah (fake blonde lifecaster) kissing her dog. This was presumably to make up for the fact that last week she didn't get to kiss Jay, … Read more

Google has kicked off a campaign against a proposed German law that would force search engine providers to pay copyright fees every time they return a news article in their results.

The Leistungsschutzrecht für Presseverleger, or "ancillary copyright for press publishers," would provide an extension of copyright in Germany to cover snippets of articles, such as those that show up in search results so the user can tell what each result is about. It is being proposed by Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition and follows intense lobbying by publishing giant Axel Springer and others.

Google today … Read more

I confess to not watching CNBC too often.

When the channel isn't presenting dour faces promising imminent immolation, it's showing over-excitable bald people telling you which stocks to buy. Well, screaming, actually. There is enough screaming in my life already.

However, this morning, there might be screaming of a different sort at CNBC, because the sleuths at Business Insider have revealed what they say is brand subterfuge. Or, if you like, insider faking.

Indeed, Business Insider insists that the shiny laptops placed before presenters -- which, for all the world, look like Macs -- are mere dolled-up Dells.… Read more

Do Facebook ads work? Of course they do, says company global marketing head Carolyn Everson.

"The biggest myth is that Facebook ads don't work," she said today, reiterating Mark Zuckerberg's comments on Facebook's ad business. And, Facebook's rising stock price seems to support the notion that advertising dollars are flowing faster these days into the company's coffers.

The shift to mobile is a major factor in how Facebook will grow its advertising. "If you look at time spent on mobile devices -- we have 600 million of a billion users on … Read more

Facebook's breast police might just be more efficient and ruthless than that of several dictatorships.

I imagine them stationed in all parts of the world, trained on anatomical textbooks and pornographic movies, moved at the sight of a breast like a gambler desperate for his horse to cross the finish-line first.

Here a breast, there a breast, everywhere they're abreast of images that Facebook deems offensive -- even if they're merely being displayed to a tiny coterie of friends.

The Web magazine Theories of the Deep Understanding of Things decided to exercise the breast police's intelligence … Read more

Superstar angel investor Ron Conway will no longer be part of the team of investors giving money to the dozens of startups taking part each year in Y Combinator, one of the world's most prestigious incubators.

Y Combinator said today that it is sharply reducing the amount of venture funding each startup coming through the program is given. For the last two years, each team was seeded with $150,000 in funding from Conway, of SV Angel, Yuri Milner, and Andreessen Horowitz. Starting today, that amount has been slashed to $80,000 per team, the incubator said, as it … Read more

This is the time of year when children display their strongest credentials for adulthood.

They find ways to manipulate their parents and suck up to their uncles and aunties -- after first, of course, examining all the ads for the most exciting gift options.

Why, only today I saw a Christmas wish list from an 8-year-old called Miles who had highlighted certain gifts in black (Things I Need"), as well as gifts in green ("Things I Want").

Best Buy clearly believes it understands these kids. It understands, it seems, that they all want Apple products.… Read more