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
I think the way to be an influential journalist is to be accurate and to be fair and to get things right and to really characterize things in an honest way, versus being really snarky or cheerleading.
While having a profound impact on the development of values is surely an important job of a good parent, force-feeding opinions to them is not.
It's easy to forget the ever-plodding eBay with all the noise made by the more lithe and lively Web 2.0 companies.
Now I am not against widgets, those small third-party applications that people can put on their Web pages on social networks like Facebook and MySpace, in general.
Here's the thing: I fell impossibly in love with the Internet from the minute I saw it in action in the early 1990s. From that moment on, I have studied it, analyzed it, reported on it, and, mostly, have not been without it as a part of my daily life since.
My father died when I was only five years old, and that was the moment when I learned a cruel lesson that tomorrow, in fact, might not be another day.
Canceling my landline phone account, cutting off service to my home for good, and rendering the telephones that had long sat on tables in every room as useless as my closeted bread machine, I took the final step in a lifelong attempt to free myself from the wires that tethered me.
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy, except - due to her rejection of Apollo's affections - nobody would ever believe her warnings.
It seemed like most of the memories faded before they had time to form. And after a while, my life with my father seemed like a familiar story or a distant dream.
Sure, I am funny and have a good sense of humor. Mostly, though, I just tell the truth. The internal dialogue people have in their heads - I just write it.
I think things can surprise you. I mean, I loved Instagram from the minute it started, but I think it surprised a lot of people how quickly it got huge.
I don't mean to sound like a touchy-feely California type here, but I knew that I could finally get over the death of my father only by having kids of my own.
It's not all silliness, as interactive SXSW is filled with aggressive learning, discussing, and a whole lot of futurizing.
While some debate its helpfulness at generating monetizable traffic, when Digg points to a story, huge audience spikes quickly follow.