SAN FRANCISCO--Tim Armstrong is such a tease.
The AOL CEO, speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit on Thursday, didn't have any high-profile announcements like many of the other speakers at the conference. But instead, he hinted that one might be on the way.
"We have been working on something for the last three months that I think is a fairly substantial shift in our technology," he said. "When that's ready to announce, maybe we'll come back and talk to you about it."
Interviewer and conference organizer John Battelle tried to pry more information out of him, to little avail. But it sounds like it has something to do with the framework that powers AOL's network of blogs and content properties.
"It's a broader platform with more information around content and the creation of content," he said. "We see that platform evolving to a much higher scale."
Armstrong, who joined AOL in March after a stint as head of sales at Google, said that recently the company has increased its roster of journalists from 500 to over 3,000, and that over 3,000 pieces of content are posted every day to AOL properties. It's also now creating three to four times as much video as it was several months ago.
"We've hired people from places like The Wall Street Journal and ESPN," Armstrong said. "You're not just hiring a person, you're hiring the community they come with, and I think that has been an important part when you look at the network effects of that."
It's still not clear how AOL, currently in the process of being spun out from parent company Time Warner, will rake in profits from this huge investment in media content. Armstrong seemed unfazed.
"If you're not going to take risks and you don't think the future is bright," he said, "the Internet is probably not the right place for you."
SAN FRANCISCO--He wasn't on the program, but nobody was disappointed that Google co-founder Sergey Brin showed up at the Web 2.0 Summit on Thursday afternoon and agreed to sit down for an onstage chat with conference organizer John Battelle.
Sergey Brin, Google co-founder
(Credit: Google)Battelle said Brin had been extended an invitation to speak but turned it down, to which Brin joked, "I didn't say no, I just never responded."
But it was an appropriate time to hear from one of the minds behind Google because one of the most evident trends at the conference is that the search market is heating back up. On Wednesday alone, Microsoft announced a partnership with Twitter and Facebook for real-time search results, Google announced a similar deal with Twitter, and Google executive Marissa Mayer previewed a new "social search" feature in Google Labs.
Brin talked about the new competition with a "bring it on" attitude. "I think what Bing has reminded us is that search is a very competitive market," he said. "There are many interesting companies out there." He said he's disappointed that Yahoo is retreating from the fight and planning to strike a deal with Microsoft instead.
"I think Yahoo had a number of innovations there, and I wish they would continue to innovate in search," Brin said. He didn't go into specifics.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz had been slated to speak at the conference on Wednesday but canceled at the last minute, citing a bad case of the flu.
Where do a software maker, a cable operator, and a home appliance maker come together? At an Internet conference, of course. The Web 2.0 Summit, going on in San Francisco now, brings together executives from all walks of life, who are shaking hands and linking their diverse set of products in new and interesting ways.
AOL: We're working on something big and secret
And CEO Tim Armstrong isn't going to tell you what it is yet--but it's something pertaining to the technology that powers its content network.October 22, 2009 3:31 p.m. PDT
News Corp. digital chief: MySpace 'kind of stopped'
As the social site attempts a turnaround, the parent company's chief digital officer talked about how it lost its way. Whether it'll be able to get back on top is less clear.October 22, 2009 1:02 p.m. PDT
Microsoft partners with Facebook, Twitter on search
Executives Qi Lu and Yusuf Mehdi debuted the Twitter integration at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The Facebook partnership will come at a later date.• Google strikes Twitter deal, too
• Hands-on with Twitterized Bing
October 21, 2009 11:43 a.m. PDT
MySpace blasts out new music features
An "artist dashboard," a music video library, and integration with iTunes were all announced by CEO Owen Van Natta at the Web 2.0 Summit conference on Wednesday.October 21, 2009 4:39 p.m. PDT
Coming to Google Labs: Social search results
Content from your social network can show up in your Google search queries--as well as Twitter results--in the company's second announcement of the day.October 21, 2009 4:20 p.m. PDT
Facebook COO: No PayPal killer, ad network--yet
The company is still in a phase of experimentation when it comes to payments and transactions on the social network's platform, Sheryl Sandberg says at the Web 2.0 Summit event.• Video: Facebook COO sees economic models changing on the Web
October 21, 2009 3:03 p.m. PDT
Eight billion minutes spent on Facebook daily
Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering, gives some background at the Web 2.0 Summit about how the site stays afloat under the weight of 300 million users.October 21, 2009 12:58 p.m. PDT
HP can't save print industry, but big props for trying
BookPrep and MagCloud are trying to modernize old-world print with an on-demand concept. Such streamlining will keep book and magazine printing afloat, if only for a while.October 21, 2009 12:01 a.m.
Not much to tweet about in Twitter CEO talk
Evan Williams takes the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit but didn't disclose anything new about its revenue plans or new features--just the revelation that he used to have a really bad haircut 15 years ago.• Video: Twitter CEO on why he turned down Facebook
October 20, 2009 5:35 p.m.
GE shows off pocket-size ultrasound scanner
At the Web 2.0 Summit, GE CEO Jeff Immelt shows off a piece of health care hardware: a tiny ultrasound device.• Video: GE shows off mini ultrasound device
October 20, 2009 6:04 p.m.
Comcast CEO: We are not a dead duck
At Web 2.0 Summit, Brian Roberts previews new on-demand video features and insists his company has more in common with Web innovation than techies will admit.October 20, 2009 3:30 p.m.
SAN FRANCISCO--With both MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta and News Corp. chief digital officer Jonathan Miller taking the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit this week, there was naturally plenty of talk about the social site's attempt to reverse its ill fortune of late. Once the biggest name in social networking, it's long since lost that title to Facebook and is trying to reinvent itself as a destination for music and entertainment.
"I think that what you see in the space more than anything else is if you don't keep innovating and moving forward you get in trouble," Miller said in his talk on Thursday morning. "You can't stop, you have to keep going, and (MySpace) didn't keep going, it kind of stopped."
And in that time, he added, "we had two fantastic competitors emerge in Facebook and Twitter."
The previous day, Van Natta made his first big appearance on the conference circuit since he joined MySpace and was tasked with a major turnaround. Van Natta unveiled a new music video hub as well as an enhanced set of marketing tools for music artists--some of which were built in with technology from iLike, which MySpace acquired this summer.
And on Wednesday night, the "new" MySpace was out in full form: a line snaked down three city blocks when music fans caught wind of the fact that the company had booked rock band Weezer for one of its "secret shows" concerts.
"MySpace started with an essence around certain things, and one of them was music, and meeting new people," Miller, a former AOL exec who also joined News Corp. this spring, said on Thursday. "We're going back to basics in that sense, but you've got to make it relevant to today and going forward."
It's obviously too early to tell whether the "reinvention" will work. Some critics say that it's too big of a task, especially given the state of the advertising market. But Miller spent a big portion of his talk at the Web 2.0 Summit hyping up the Fox Audience Network, or FAN, the digital advertising division that News Corp. first announced last spring.
"We kind of broke it out of MySpace and gave it a life of its own," Miller said. "We're just at the beginning of a coming-out party for FAN."
FAN just inked a deal with agency giant Omnicom, and more are on the way, he added. Miller also said FAN is the fifth-largest ad network on the Web, after the usual suspects--Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL--and that it's hoping to get into fourth place soon.
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 to the audience as springing from the same kind of entrepreneurial spirit that the Bay Area prides itself on.
He spoke of how he took over the reins of the company from his father, who according to legend was able to make an early strategic acquisition thanks to the winnings from a Tupelo, Miss., poker game the night before. "Similar to probably almost everyone in this room, (he) wanted to work for himself, wanted to start his own business."
He previewed new features for the Comcast video hub Fancast, which it launched slightly under two years ago at the Consumer Electronics Show. The new beta of Fancast, which will launch by year's end, will make new on-demand content available online, much of it unavailable in outlets like iTunes--and integrated with DVR boxes--to Comcast cable subscribers who already pay for HBO. About two dozen content providers have signed on board, and as Roberts scrolled through the preview, he noted that there were about a thousand movies available.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts
(Credit: Comcast)Battelle, interviewing Roberts onstage, called it "video-on-demand on steroids."
The Associated Press, referencing a briefing this week with executives at Comcast's Philadelphia headquarters, helped fill in some of the details about the service, noting that it would include such popular cable shows as HBO's "Entourage" and AMC's "Mad Men" and for now is being called "On Demand Online."
The AP said Comcast subscribers can initially watch shows and movies only on their home computers after being verified by the cable system. Online viewing, at least in the beginning, will be restricted to those who get Internet service through Comcast, not through competitors like phone companies, the AP said.
Back at Web 2.0 Summit, Roberts also said that Comcast investments in broadband technology are, in part, what has facilitated the explosion in Web innovation.
"We're going to keep investing, because we believe there are great ideas in this room and in this country and in the world," Roberts said. "In the same way, it's unthinkable that a Google or a Yahoo or a Facebook or a Twitter would be happening if we hadn't made those investments (in broadband infrastructure) 15 years ago."
Battelle asked Roberts why he believes the U.S. lags behind in broadband technology advancements. Roberts replied, "I think that that's just not true."
(The audience laughed uncomfortably.)
"We have the same equipment (as other countries), the same wires, the same infrastructure, why is the adoption different is a different question. It's not the availability and I don't think it's the lack of speed," he continued. "You get to digital literacy, you get to what language it's in, do you have the right PC or a PC at all...I don't believe the infrastructure providers haven't done enough."
As for Net neutrality, an issue where Comcast has been a frequent villain after imposing bandwidth caps and interfering with peer-to-peer file-sharing software, Roberts was vague.
"We welcome that discussion, that scrutiny, and we're going to be an active participant," he said. "The few limited examples, including our own, that have gotten notoriety usually get dealt with in ten seconds, and changes get made, because this is new technology."
More recently, it's bubbled into the press that Comcast is in talks with General Electric to obtain a controlling stake in its NBC Universal property. Conveniently, GE chief Jeffrey Immelt was slated to speak later in the afternoon at Web 2.0 Summit.
"You and Jeff Immelt must have finished the NBC deal back in the green room," Battelle joked.
Roberts replied facetiously, "It's all done."
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