The picture of the grandes dames of New York publishing, fighting for places aboard the internet lifeboats, is a source of endless amusement-not least because they bring their feuds with them.
So internet mogul Barry Diller won the struggle for control of IAC, the ungainly conglomerate which owns sites such as Ticketmaster and College Humor. Here's his celebratory announcement to employees. It's rather clunkier than one expects of the highly quotable IAC boss. Presumably Diller means, in the last line, that employees can have more confidence in the future; wishing IAC colleagues instead more surefootedness implies that IAC's missteps were somehow their fault. And some graphically-aware assistant really should help the 66-year-old former studio boss change his default email font.
Score one for the bitter old queen. Barry Diller, battling with major IAC shareholder John Malone in court, has won the right to break up IAC without interference from Malone's Liberty. This solves one problem for Diller, but creates another. Instead of running one hodgepodge of Internet businesses, he'll have five of them to worry about. Sparring with Malone, a business ally turned enemy, will look simple compared to regaining Wall Street's affections.
Say farewell to Mo Koyfman, the IAC executive dropped in to monitor the crazy kids when Barry Diller's internet conglomerate acquired College Humor. He's resigned from his position as chief operating officer of the dorky web site. There's nothing particularly amusing about the news, except for the assumption that Koyfman represented adult supervision. Founders Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen were always substantially more straight-laced than their reputation for rampant loft parties would indicate; while 30-year-old wannabe modelizer Koyfman, however engaging, is as much a grown-up as Barry Diller is an internet guru.
Wikileaks obtained a JP Morgan presentation put together for media mogul Barry Diller, showing Diller how to protect his personal wealth against any, erm, hypothetical future declines in the value of his internet conglomerate IAC. The techniques outlined in the 31-page document (PDF) neatly circumvent restrictions on insider trading but are really only useful for insiders who anticipate their company shares will decline, since stock price increases are limited along with declines. For example, here was the plan presented to Diller in February 2007:
Could Barry Diller's Fi Life, a misconceived financial portal for young investors, already be in trouble? Several journalists who joined the outfit, a joint venture between Diller's IAC and Dow Jones, are said to be scrambling for new jobs. (Email if you have details.) The project involved Dave Kansas, a veteran of online financial news with a jinx; partnerships between big media conglomerates usually work better as cocktail party fantasy than they do as actual businesses; and Rupert Murdoch, who acquired Dow Jones last year, prefers full control. So Fi Life was obviously doomed. But one would have thought Diller, who's in a Delaware court fighting for control of his internet conglomerate, would want to arrange a more elegant unwinding.
The scene: two billionaires, former friends, are feuding over an internet conglomerate, IAC. John Malone's initial salvo comes in quotes given by the corporate assassin to the Wall Street Journal. Barry Diller, IAC's chairman, described his reaction in this week's court struggle for control of the sprawling internet company.
Malone: "The hook is set. It is our company... Barry ain't going to be able to spit the hook."
Diller: "I sail. I don't fish. I got the point."
Barry Diller is still pissed at Greg Maffei, the Liberty Media executive who broke up his close relationship with Liberty Chairman John Malone. Here is how Diller began testimony in his court battle to retain control of IAC: "Mr. Maffei, 47 years old, was an 'irresponsible executive,' Mr. Diller testified in Delaware Chancery Court. 'For over a year and a half, he has spoken badly about our businesses and our managers,' said Mr. Diller, who is scheduled to continue his testimony today." [WSJ]
Here's more evidence that Barry Diller sees the family of his companion, Diane von Furstenberg, as the dynasty the gay media mogul would never have otherwise had. The court battle over control of Diller's IAC has turned up an email in which Diller discussed a plan to seize voting control of the internet conglomerate. The recipient: not a business advisor, but sexy baldie Alex von Furstenberg, son of the fashion designer and likely heir to Diller's fortune.
For IAC's Barry Diller and his backer John Malone, the two billionaires wrestling for control of the internet conglomerate this week, a lawsuit is merely the continuation of negotiation by other means. A witness notes that the moguls are continuing settlement talks even as they trash each other in a Delaware court.
Evil queen and IAC CEO Barry Diller used to get along great with his gruff sugar daddy John Malone of Liberty Media, making business dates and talking about deals together. Then Greg Maffei came along, from the kill-or-be-killed culture of software maker Oracle, and became Malone's new "point man." All of a sudden, "everything got much more contentious" between Malone and Diller, an IAC board member testified yesterday, in a trail where Diller and Malone are struggling for control of the company. Now Diller is just a spurned partner "looking for a divorce," Maffei said. [NYT, WSJ]
· In Extreme Fighting Championship: Mogul Edition, Liberty Media head John Malone and a major shareholder in Barry Diller's IAC took Diller to court over Diller's plan to split his company into five not-so-easy pieces. In his opening day testimony, he accused Diller of selfishly referring to their warm-and-fuzzy, communal corporate multi-conglomerate as "his business," and of having mastered the "'fine art' of taking advantage of the corporate jet." There really is a fine art to that, as Diller has been known to order in entire water polo teams when he suddenly develops a midnight hankering for some Italian. [Variety]
· As soon as celebrated fauxteur Brett Ratner finishes shooting on his Imagine Playboy movie (to be released simultaneously in IMAX Bunny-D!), his next project is looking to be a live-action version of '90s comic book series Harbinger. [Variety]
One expects flouncy Barry Diller, when he testifies in this week's court battle for control of IAC, will provide the colorful language which has kept journalists sweet for him for so many decades. But John Malone, the soulless corporate raider who is trying to seize the internet conglomerate from Diller, didn't do so badly himself today. The Coloradan billionaire told the Delaware court that the extravagant Diller, who decked out his office in IAC's Gehry-designed headquarters with fabulously expensive rugs, had made "a fine art" of his exploitation of the company jet.
Internet mogul Barry Diller is locked in a battle with former cable baron John Malone for control over IAC, and he told his staff last night to expect the case to go to court this week. Writes a tipster:
Barry Diller's battle with Liberty Media head John Malone for control over IAC could be over in a week, Diller told a crowd at a Variety event yesterday. "It's very odd that two people who don't want to give up control of anything are giving control to a judge in Delaware," he said. "The wonderful thing about Delaware is they do it quickly. They make a decision quickly." Some shareholders might wish for the same alacrity from Diller.
As Barry Diller curtails both Ask.com's ambitions and its workforce, his hired hand is turning it into the Home Shopping Network of search engines. CEO Jim Safka says 65 percent of its users are female with a high concentration in their late 30s in the Midwest and Southeast. In an attempt to try to get also-ran search site back on track, Safka is laying off eight percent of Ask's employees and "reevaluating" its strategy. "Everything we do will be put through this strategic filter," he says. At last, a search engine that plays in Peoria. The only problem is that even Midwestern housewives know how to Google.
As his search engine Ask.com inches toward irrelevance, besieged IAC CEO Barry Diller has found another crowded market to pour cash into: videogames. According to Variety, Diller plans to invest $50 million to $100 million of IAC's money on InstantAction, a new site from recently acquired IAC subsidiary GarageGames. GarageGames doesn't develop games quite so "casual" as the type Mark Pincus's Zynga produces, but the venture's product will still be Internet-based games made for those who don't want to waste time in front of a TV. Just like everyone else in the market, only a year or two later.
"This place was buzzing today that there will be layoffs here soon," an Ask.com employee tips us off. The tipster complains that since completing "a bunch of tests for new ways to make money, no one in my group has seen or heard from management [since] they had a pizza lunch the first week of January." It's the second Ask layoff rumor we've heard this month.
Jakob Lodwick is back in the Bay Area, kicking it at his cousin's San Francisco-based startup. The only thing slightly more terrifying than the prospect of one of our local girls becoming his new softcore pinup is the notion that Lodwick might end his blogging strike. Oh wait, he has — three times over. Lodwick, unemployed after getting fired from Connected Venture by Barry Diller, lasted 20 days without blogging. Alongside our daily dose of Jakob Lodwick, he'll expose us to stuff he likes, and apparently work on a political manifesto dubbed The Invisible Fist in which he'll attempt to destroy capitalism as we know it. Good luck on Sand Hill Road, Jakob.
Bennett Miller won a best-director Oscar nomination for Capote, a film about the corruption of a literary icon, and two years later has himself cashed in an artistic reputation by directing an American Express commercial aired for the first time during last night's Academy Awards. The star of the ad is fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg, who supposedly became "independent" and confident as a result of fashion — a great message when you are trying to pimp financial services to small businesses. Left unsaid: Von Furstenberg was married to a Swiss prince from a wealthy family when she first broke in to fashion, and would hardly have wanted for startup capital. During and after that time, she was in a long-term relationship with entertainment mogul Barry Diller, to whom she is now married and who can easily pay whatever Amex charges the fashion designer might incur. Of course the ad is beautiful and feels honest, a testament to Miller's skill at spooling out a plausible dramatic narrative on film, and of course to his lack of a rich spouse who can save him from having to make commercials:
