Valleywag
iac
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layoffs
Ticketmaster lays off an estimated 1,000 employees
The layoffs are moving up the food chain, from the startups to the larger tech beasts. FuckedStartups writes that Ticketmaster is laying off 35 percent of its 3,000-plus staff, which squares with other reports I've heard. Ticketmaster is besieged with competition from concert promoter LiveNation, and was recently spun off by IAC. If I had to bet, I'd say these cuts have as much to do with removing the layers of cruft which accumulated under years of flitty mismanagement by IAC CEO Barry Diller as they do with the economy. -
Blamestorming
Barry Diller blames investors for IAC stock price
Buried in a Wall Street Journal interview with Barry Diller, CEO of the ever-shifting Internet conglomerate IAC, which owns Ask.com and some other websites, was a nugget of insight revealing what Diller thinks of the people who invest in his company. Asked about IAC's stock performance, he replied:The truth is the market made judgments, and the recent judgments have been poor. There were legitimate reasons for that. Now, there are operating facts about this company that are irrefutable: It has revenue, it has earnings, it has a lot of cash and no debt. More » -
search
Is Ask.com feeling lucky?
Ask.com's latest revamp, unveiled by CEO Jim Safka to the New York Times, attempts to dive deeper into the Web, pulling "structured data," a fashionable buzzword, from sources like TV listings and health databases. Give Barry Diller's scrappy search engine, owned by his IAC conglomerate, this much: When at first it doesn't succeed, it tries, tries, tries again. But you can't blame the market, or users, for finding all this trying, well, trying. More » -
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caption contest
You know little boy, I have much I can teach you
At the Diane von Fürstenberg show at New York's Fashion Week, Google cofounder Sergey Brin and his 23andMe cofounder wife Anne Wojcicki were spotted front and center. Which is hilarious, since Brin is rarely seen in anything but a t-shirt and jeans — hopefully he wore more stylish footwear than Crocs. Here he's spotted in the usual ensemble with Barry Diller, CEO of IAC, who had the sense to wear actual fashion. Friday's winner was hmann with "No, it's $40 for one song. You have to buy your own drinks, and there's no touching." (Photo by Getty/Michael Tran) -
copyfight
Is Opentape a jab at the RIAA?
Following the shutdown of Muxtape, a site for posting online mixtapes, in a dispute with the music industry, someone has launched Opentape.fm, where you can download code to easily create your own Muxtape-like online mixtapes of MP3 files. And if the creators of Muxtape aren't directly responsible, they probably fed Opentape's developers everything they would need. The first clue is that the site is powered by the favored online publishing platform of millennial hipsters, Tumblr. Another clue is that the domain registration information points to 152 W. 57th Street in Manhattan, which just happens to be IAC CEO Barry Diller's address (Justin Ouellette, Muxtape's founder, worked at IAC site Vimeo). Then there are two small hints in the code: More » -
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earnings
IAC down more than half a billion in second quarter
In the second quarter, IAC swung from a $94.6 million profit last year to a $421.6 million loss this year. Don't blame Jakob Lodwick! His former company, Vimeo, is nowhere near the top of IAC/InterActiveCorp's expense report for the past quarter. The real problem at Barry Diller's Internet empire is Cornerstone Brands, a rollup of catalog companies undermined by weak consumer spending in home and apparel retail. Cornerstone's losses led to a $300 million writedown in goodwill in IAC's second quarter. In addition, the soft real estate market cut revenue for home financing site LendingTree nearly in half. More » -
max levchin
Barry Diller reveals he still likes them young in Sun Valley
At Allen & Co.'s annual schmoozefest in Sun Valley, Idaho, there were a lot of regulars, like IAC's Barry Diller — and a few new faces, like Slide CEO Max Levchin. Julia Boorstin of CNBC reports that the two were "lingering" together at lunch. This after Kevin Rose reported how Diller charmed
the (metaphorical) pants off of him in acquisition talks that ultimately went nowhere. I doubt any dalliance between Diller's IAC and Levchin's Slide will go much further; Slide's far too expensive, and Diller's far too fickle. But I'm sure Diller finds the company of young men refreshing. -
the chart
Vimeo without founder Jakob Lodwick: quite successful
Is IAC's Vimeo, the video-sharing site founded by bizarrely charismatic (and just plain bizarre) New York entrepreneur Jakob Lodwick, missing its founder? In a word, no. Lodwick lost his job due to insubordination last November; his dare-you-to-sue-me funding of an IAC employee's music startup, in an apparent violation of his noncompete agreement, is right in line with the nose-thumbing he did while on the job. We heard IAC finally fired Lodwick because he would blow off meetings with upper management when it wanted to talk to him about things like marketing and growth. So who got it right — IAC chairman Barry Diller's suits, or the wannabe iconoclast? More » -
online advertising
Barry Diller, IAC, kick out third-party ad networks
After selling its premium advertising inventory, the 63 companies that used to make up Barry Diller's IAC sell the remnants to third-party ad networks, which pay $1 or $1.50 per thousand pagviews. Not a great business. In an effort to boost those CPMs nearer to $6, IAC will from now on instead pool the inventory from the 63 companies and then divide it up based on advertiser-friendly demographics. AdAge reports that IAC will define its wealthy users, for example, as More »
