At our third EconSM conference last week, Kevin Thau, director of mobile business development for Twitter, was interviewed by MarketWatch Editor-in-Chief David Callaway about the direction of the immensely popular micro-blogging service. The full video is below. Complete coverage of the conference is on our EconSM channel, while the rest…

Long-time angel investor Ron Conway (pictured, right), a special partner at Baselines Ventures, talked with Vator.tv founder Bambi Francisco at EconSM Thursday. Biggest regret? Passing over Salesforce.com. Most disappointing investment? Napster. Biggest surprise? Digg. Then there are a few others you might have heard of—Facebook, Twitter, Google. Some more highlights…

As Pandora’s audience begins to mirror that of radio listeners at large, the company will likely run additional audio ads, Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy said at the econSM Conference Thursday. Currently, Pandora runs only a small number of audio ads, he said.

We’ve gotten hints about Twitter’s business model from its founders, its backers and random speculators—but Kevin Thau, Twitter’s director of mobile business development, gave EconSM attendees a more tangible picture of the startup’s plans for a three-pronged revenue stream: It’s about search, carriers and content. Thau joined Twitter in mid-January,…

When asked point blank about being the only network that’s not on Hulu, CBS (NYSE: CBS) Interactive’s CFO Zander Lurie said the problem was the rival site’s need for exclusivity: “Hulu’s done a great job executing—acquiring compelling content and running ads—but we have a great model that runs on non-exclusive…

We’ve heard about indie developers making millions of dollars in revenue from mobile and social media apps, but what about a giant like CBS? (NYSE: CBS) CBSi has an app for TV.com, not to mention music apps for Last.fm and third-parties like *AOL*—but are users flocking to them? Are advertisers?…

Correction: MySpace (NSDQ: NWS) says that 35 percent of its mobile traffic now comes from mobile apps, up from less than 10 percent a year ago. The stats refer to the social network’s mobile traffic, not its overall traffic. We regret the error. Facebook and MySpace are going full force…

In our second video from EconSM 2008, Social Approach’s CEO Shawn Gold moderated Getting Real: Grown-Up Start Ups with Dalton Caldwell, imeem’s founder and CEO, Seth Goldstein, SocialMedia Networks’ co-founder and CEO, Keith Richman Break.com’s co-founder and CEO, and Toni Schneider, Automattic’s CEO. In this panel covering the topic of…

On Tuesday we had our second Economics of Social Media conference and, as promised, we’ll be posting videos here of all the sessions. Below, our Keynote Q&A with Steve Wadsworth, president of Walt Disney Internet Group (NYSE: DIS), interviewed by Kara Swisher of AllThingsD. Aside from admitting to Disney’s early…

The final panel at EconSM was the deals panel, which ContentNext Editor and Publisher Rafat Ali described as the “flagship” panel. Economy and outlook for 2008: Geoff Yang, Redpoint Ventures: “There’s been a lot of money raised in the venture business, but there aren’t that many spaces that have a…

AOL’s $850 million purchase of Bebo back in March was one of the big social media deals of the year. In a Q&A with ContentNext co-editor Staci Kramer and paidContent:UK Editor Robert Andrews, Ron Grant of AOL (NYSE: AOL) and Bebo’s Joanna Shields (live from London!) discussed the deal, and…

Advertisers and media companies have a strange disconnect when it comes to social media. On one hand, they’re heartily embrace the ability to directly engage with consumers. And on the other hand, they fear that engagement and are desperate to figure out how to control it and measure it. A…