battelle

SAN FRANCISCO--There was an uneasiness in the air this week at the stately Palace Hotel during the eighth annual Web 2.0 Summit, the sort of vibe that you couldn't see in the glossy program or in the lineup of events that included talks by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, and big-ticket investors like John Doerr and Fred Wilson. People weren't talking about it, for the most part, but you could see it. You could hear it sometimes, too, if you knew what to listen for.

"We're … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Cable companies get a lot of criticism from the Silicon Valley set for being some of the ultimate 20th century corporate dinosaurs. Or, as Web 2.0 Summit conference organizer John Battelle put it, "a dead duck."

So the head of Comcast, a company that's taken loads of heat from tech experts--for imposing bandwidth caps, poor customer service, and an alleged failure to innovate on both broadband speeds and the convergence between television and the Web--was an interesting choice to kick off the summit event here on Tuesday. But Comcast CEO Brian Roberts spun his company … Read more

Om Malik, the head of the Giga Omni Media group of tech blogs, said on Friday he is moving his ad business from John Battelle's Federated Media to a new advertising network IDG launched in March.

The companies, which have partnered for three years (and weathered differences of opinion involving a scandal over "conversational marketing" in which the writing of Malik, Battelle, and other bloggers was featured in ads for Microsoft), are splitting amicably. They are characterizing the move as them having grown in different directions, according to Malik and Federated Media Publisher Chas Edwards.

Giga Omni … Read more

The Web 2.0 Summit wrapped up Friday with conversations about the Internet, politics, renewable energy, and space. Below are videos of on-stage talks, courtesy of TechWeb.

In a panel discussion in which The Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington is joined by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Democratic campaign organizer Joe Trippi, Huffington argues that "were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president," in part because the blogosphere has "an obsessive-compulsive disorder." Trippi agrees that "the (Internet) medium demands authenticity."

In response to Huffington's remark that "politicians … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--John Battelle, CEO of Federated Media, decided to have a little bit of speculative fun onstage Thursday with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit. It's the sort of "speculative fun" that could give tech bloggers a gossip-overload headache for weeks to come: Battelle decided to throw some fuel on the "Facebook might buy Twitter" fire. Which, as far as I can tell, is a relatively new addition to the rumor-roasting pit.

"Is Twitter just a feature of Facebook?" Battelle prodded. Facebook, after all, has its own "status&… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--This hasn't been the best year for a lot of people in the tech industry. But nobody can argue that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang hasn't had a particularly rough time.

"Jerry Yang has had a tough nine months," Web 2.0 Summit host John Battelle of Federated Media said as he introduced the CEO for a talk at the conference here on Wednesday, and went on to list some of his company's much-documented woes. Yang, in a blue blazer and white checkered shirt, slouching a bit in his chair, replied, "That's quite … Read more

A month after announcing his resignation from PC World magazine, tech journalism veteran Harry McCracken has announced a new venture: Technologizer, an online destination for general technology news and analysis.

The new site will be launched later this summer in conjunction with advertising start-up Federated Media Publishing; founder John Battelle is himself a veteran of the tech press, having co-founded Wired magazine and founded The Industry Standard in the 1990s.

Federated will also work to develop the site, in addition to providing ads, much as it did for Boing Boing Gadgets and Webb Alert. Technologizer will join the company's &… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--"It turns out that the Internet has worked pretty well," industry mainstay Marc Andreessen told an audience at the Web 2.0 Expo here Thursday morning.

Andreessen's keynote interview with Federated Media chief John Battelle was somewhat of a history lesson into the distant past of the Web (you know, 15 years ago) followed by the requisite speculation about an uncertain future.

"It was a very confusing time," Andreessen said of the Net's early days. In the early days of Mosaic, the browser created by Andreessen that eventually evolved into Netscape and … Read more

What would possess a collection of online publishers and venture capitalists to pimp a Microsoft advertising slogan?

Valleywag today reported about a site tied to a Microsoft ad campaign where the likes of Michael Arrington, Om Malik and others seemingly lend their support to the "people-ready" catchphrase.

I sent e-mails both to Arrington and Malik and--surprise, surprise--heard nothing back. (Obviously, they are not yet sufficiently "Coop-ready.") Microsoft was still checking for me into whether money exchanged hands. But even if not a single shekel exchanged hands, I must wonder about the absence of common sense. Why … Read more