Kara Swisher
Kara Swisher
Kara Swisher is an American technology columnist and an author and commentator on the Internet. She created and wrote Boom Town, a column which appeared on the front page of the Marketplace section and online, and subsequently appeared on All Things Digital, which she founded and served as the co-executive editor with Walt Mossberg. On January 1, 2014, Swisher and Mossberg struck out on their own, with a new site, Re/code, based in San Francisco, California...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth25 January 1963
CountryUnited States of America
As anyone who has covered the company for any length of time knows, Yahoo's record on major decision-making has been akin to a hippie commune - a lot of wrangling internally in a culture where everyone seems to have a voice and a reticence to push the button to launch.
It's the nature of journalism to need to be close to your subjects. And either you're able to be tough on them, which a lot of us are, or you get in bed with them, and some people do.
I don't have bad taste; I have no taste. I wear a lot of the things I wore in high school, but not the cowl-neck sweaters. I was never tall, and I am the same size, so I still wear a lot of those clothes.
Having a baby had always seemed the easiest and most natural thing to do, and I had never felt - even in my most furtive days of coming out - that being gay would mean I could not become a mother.
I bought tiny infant onesies while still in college and compiled a killer toy collection throughout my 20s and 30s.
I'm focused on getting to a place where we can prove that journalism can make good money on the web.
It is hard to look away from the swirl of media that the untimely and tragic death of Heath Ledger has engendered, and the Internet has jacked the frenzy into overdrive.
I don't write about Google except to insult the company.
My telephone manners were, well, offensive to some. As I lugged my cell around, yammering away, I noticed cold stares from passersby who viewed me as a kind of techno-terrorist, or at least incredibly rude.
While some debate its helpfulness at generating monetizable traffic, when Digg points to a story, huge audience spikes quickly follow.
While a lot of what is on Facebook is a better amalgam of what AOL, Yahoo, Amazon, and other Web pioneers introduced long ago, with a nice dash of connection and really identified community, this kind of thing is not a new idea.
As more ad spending shifts online, the ability to have expertise and to innovate quickly will become critical.
No amount of tools can help a bad product. You have to remain genuine in your product development innovation and quality.
As I have seen with a lot of companies I have covered, acquisition interest can be a heady experience, and not always in a good way.