Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, of the Wall Street Journal’s “D: All Things Digital” conference, took the DEMO stage for a 30-minute head to head conversation today. It was a good chat where they tackled things like Google Chrome, Facebook’s future and the iPhone. Both were somewhat critical of Google and Chrome. Kara doesn’t think that Facebook will have a long future – “How are they going to make money?” she asks. And the iPhone is a revolutionary product, Walt says, but AT&T’s 3G network is immature. And the U.S. government should be ashamed that this country is a third-world nation when it comes to broadband.
But the biggest oooohs came from the crowd after Venture Beat blogger Dean Takahashi asked the two why they attended DEMO in San Diego instead of TechCrunch 50, which was scheduled for the same days in San Francisco, and what they thought about the competition between the two.
With that said, Mossberg noted that DEMO is a good show and he never imagined not attending. Swisher said it was unfortunate for the companies and the technologies that they had to compete for attention this week.
But what did Kara – who is not one to beat around the bush with her words – really think about TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, who hasn’t made many friends with some of his comments and condescending remarks.
“Being lectured on journalism ethics by Michael Arrington is like getting parenting advice from Britney Spears,” she said.
OUCH.
