All Things Digital

This morning, Peter Chernin, the chief operating officer of News Corp. (NWS) (which owns Dow Jones and this site), acknowledged that Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace, will fall short of its goal of generating $1 billion in revenue for fiscal 2008. A surprising shortfall for a division that operates the strongest social-networking offering on the Web.

But not to worry, MySpace has a solution for that. It’s just one that lacks an obvious monetization strategy. It’s called Data Availability and it’s a way for MySpace members to share and sync profile data across partner sites–starting with Yahoo (YHOO), eBay (EBAY), Twitter and Photobucket. “The walls around the garden are coming down–the implementation of Data Availability injects a new layer of social activity and creates a more dynamic Internet,” enthused Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace, in a statement. “We, alongside our Data Availability launch partners, are pioneering a new way for the global community to integrate their social experiences Web-wide.”

That’s all well and good. But how about pioneering a new way to, you know, make money off that integration? Data portability is wonderfull and all. But so is revenue. And right now, MySpace’s Data Availability initiative doesn’t include any advertising deals.

As the anniversary of the iPhone’s market debut approaches, the Mac faithful are quickly succumbing to Apple (AAPL) Rumor Seasonal Affective Disorder, an ailment most often associated with the lead-up to Macworld.

Fueling that trend today is a memo, purportedly leaked from inside AT&T (T), instructing employees not to schedule any vacation between June 15 and July 12 to ensure sufficient staffing for “an exciting Summer Promotional Launch.” This, of course, is being taken as proof positive that the 3G iPhone will arrive at market sometime during that timeframe. And for good reason, AT&T issued a similar mandate last year prior to the iPhone’s official debut.

Meanwhile, Vodafone (VOD) and Telecom Italia (TI-A) said today that they’d both won contracts to bring the iPhone to Italy this year, the first time Apple has allowed two mobile carriers to distribute the device in a single country.

An interesting bit of news and one that lends some validity to recent reports that Apple is stepping back from the exclusive iPhone distribution arrangements it’s been inking to spur iPhone growth abroad. “Apple’s either turned a corner that they’ve had to turn, or that they’ve chosen to,” Technology Business Research’s Ezra Gottheil said of the Vodafone and Telecom Italia deals. “I don’t know if they prefer the exclusivity, and the revenue sharing that goes along with it, or just prefer to sell iPhones and grow their share of the [handset] market.”

Time Warner’s AOL division posted financial results today, and while its revenue did not, as some investors worried, “fall off a cliff,” it’s clearly hanging on to one for dear life.

Revenue at the AOL unit slid 23% to $1.1 billion, with much of that decline stemming from a steep 28% drop-off in dial-up subscribers. Ad-revenue growth slowed markedly, rising just 1%. Disappointing news for Time Warner (TWX), which has been mulling the possible sale of AOL. With the MicroHoo merger on the horizon, the field of suitors for the division could narrow by two very quickly.

That said, today brought with it good news for Time Warner as well. The company reported first-quarter earnings that were largely in line with analyst expectations and announced plans to spin off its cable operation. “We’ve decided that a complete structural separation of Time Warner Cable, under the right circumstances, is in the best interests of both companies’ shareholders,” Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said today in a statement. “We’re working hard on an agreement with Time Warner Cable, which we expect to finalize soon.”

The economy may be slowing, the traditional wireline phone business deterioriating, but Verizon (VZ), as director Michael Bay says in one of the company’s new commercials (see below), is doing “awesome.”

The company’s first-quarter earnings met Wall Street expectations today thanks to strong growth in its wireless and FIOS home fiber-optic services businesses. With a 10% increase in first-quarter profit, and revenues that rose 5.5% to $23.83 billion, Verizon’s business would appear to be more recession-proof than others. “We’re really not seeing a change in trends,” Chief Financial Officer Doreen Toben said in an interview. “How many people are really going to drop their wireless phone?”

Not very many. Verizon added 1.5 million subscribers to its mobile business during the quarter. That said, there are plenty of folks willing to drop their landlines. Verizon wire-line subscribers declined 8.2% to 40.52 million from 44.15 million in the first quarter of 2007.

AOL’s ad revenue may be “falling off a cliff,” according to CNBC’s David Faber, but its traffic’s not half bad. AOL (TWX) said today that page views to its Web sites hit an all-time high in March, according to comScore (SCOR) Media Metrix. Page views grew 28% during the month, and are up 35% year-over-year. Unique visitors rose 11% year-over-year to 56.5 million.

AOL attributes the double-digit growth to a year-long redesign and rebranding effort, which ironically included a de-emphasizing of the AOL brand. “If I call a hip-hop site AOL Hip Hop,” said Bill Wilson, executive vice president of AOL Vertical Programming, “that just won’t resonate with consumers.”

If there’s been a slowdown in U.S. consumer spending, nobody told Apple. This afternoon, the company reported second-quarter revenue of $7.5 billion on net income of $1.1 billion, or $1.16 per diluted share, pretty much blowing the doors off Wall Street expectations.

Apple (AAPL) shipped 2,289,000 Macs (up 51%), 10,644,000 iPods (up 1%) and 1,703,000 iPhones during the quarter.

“We’re delighted to report … the strongest March quarter revenue and earnings in Apple’s history,” said CEO Steve Jobs, recycling the soundbyte CFO Peter Oppenheimer used to describe the company’s 2007 March quarter.

Clearly, business is good in Cupertino. That said, Apple says it expects fiscal third-quarter earnings of $1 a share on revenue of $7.2 billion–a bit below analyst expectations. And the Street, which by now should be familiar with Apple’s under-promise-and-over-deliver earnings highjinks, isn’t at all happy with that forecast. The company’s shares slipped a bit in after-hours trading.

Investors who were chugging Milk of Magnesia in advance of Google’s (GOOG) quarterly earnings today were given a nice surprise this afternoon when the company posted solid profit and sales gains for the quarter.

Net income rose 31% on revenue growth of 42% from a year ago, exceeding Wall Street estimates. Overall paid clicks rose 20% in the quarter compared with the period a year earlier. That’s down from 30% growth of the previous quarter, but better much better than the forecasts of, ahem, certain third parties. “Our ongoing innovation in search, ads and apps helped drive healthy growth globally across our product lines, yielding another strong quarter for Google,” said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. Apparently, the slowing U.S. economy hasn’t had much impact on the company’s business.

Shares of Google soared past the $500 mark in after-hours trading on the news. Seems the company’s historic run is far from over.