Category: The Conversation Economy

Tim Armstrong didn’t need the job, but he decided to accept Time Warner’s offer to become the CEO of AOL anyway. Why?

That’s the first question I have for Tim when he joins us at Web 2 next week. What do you want me to ask him?

As you most likely know, Tim came to AOL from Google, where he ran North American ad sales for years. Clearly, Tim relishes a challenge, and sees an opportunity. And, while Tim probably is too politic to discuss it, AOL will be spun out soon, and either go public or become an independent entity (unwinding the most disastrous new/old media merger in recent history).

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I met with Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe, ten days ago – one week before the annual Adobe developer’s conference. He told me there’d be a lot of news about Adobe coming, and the company certainly delivered – in particular around mobile and Flash platform development.

But while the list of product and platform releases is impressive, it was Adobe’s earlier announcement of its acquisition of Omniture that got folks buzzing. From my point of view, this is one more step in Adobe becoming a central platform company in the Internet ecosystem.

With 800mm installs of Flash, the acquisition of Omniture, and a multi-device strategy, Adobe aims to become the industry standard in how marketers and media companies deliver experiences to audiences and customers. And while many still view the company as the provider of end user tools like Photoshop, the reality is that Adobe is in fact Microsoft’s most significant web platform competitor, which in turn makes it a significant competitor to Google in some areas (though the companies collaborate on key initiatives, like the Open Screen Project, for example, which is clearly as anti-Microsoft as they come). The difference, Narayen told me, is that Adobe does not have (nor does it plan to have) a media business, so it doesn’t compete with its partners.

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Jon Miller has graced the Web 2 stage several times, most memorably when he was CEO of AOL, and both Google and Microsoft were competing for his company’s search deal (Google won, that deal is close to expiration, and now-CEO Tim Armstrong, who helped Google win the deal back then, will be discussing, at the Summit, who he might next partner with – Microsoft or Google – but I digress…for now).

Now Miller runs digital for none other than Rupert Murdoch. I’ve enjoyed my relationship with Jon over the years, he’s a straight shooter. He’s inherited a number of seemingly intractable problems – the digital model for news, for one, MySpace, for another. But when I spent an hour with him in New York a couple of weeks ago, he was unperturbed. He’s seen too much.

Since Jon agreed to submit to yet another Battelle-style interrogation, his newest report Owen Van Atta has also joined the lineup (it’s so recent that we don’t have him up yet on the speaker page). No matter, I’ll ask both Owen and Jon what the plan is for MySpace.

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What more can be said about Carol Bartz? Her appearance at the helm of Yahoo has certainly energized the company and given both its supporters and detractors plenty to talk about. But beyond the colorful language and straight shooting demeanor lies one of the most challenging turnarounds in Internet history (at least from this observer’s point of view).
Last year I interviewed Jerry Yang, and by most reports, it didn’t go so well. Well, let me put that another way – it was great to watch (and to be part of), but many said that interview was pretty much proof that Jerry needed to find someone else to run Yahoo. Which is why I am both impressed and a bit trepidatious that Bartz agreed to sit for an interview – will she think I’m trying to drive her to the brink of quitting?! Well, the answer there is no, but I will want to ask her the hard questions. And that’s where you come in.
What do you want to hear from Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo?
Others we’ll be interviewing (and I’ve asked for your help):

Evan Williams

Brian Roberts

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