Debate what it means for your next viewing. And it is monday. My producers will once again try to stump me tonight with tonights mystery guest. All that and more over the next hour. First headlines from my radio cohaas carol massar. 10 , 178 billion. It also offered to further increase the price if the bank agrees to terminate a separate deal to buy eddie bauer. The offer expires march 12. President obama telling governors today that a decision over whether to approve the Keystone Pipeline probably will be made within a couple of months. Transcanada applied more than five years ago for permits to build the 5. 4 billion pipeline through the United States heartland. Facebooks Mark Zuckerburg speaking today in barcelona. He is looking three or seeking three to five phone companies as partners in an effort to connect billions of people to the internet that dont yet have access. Pimm, these are your top headlines at this hour. Back to you. To other news. , e i con post carl icahn what did he have to say . We spoke for quite some time on street smart at 3 00, basically the letter comes out and criticizes the board for its conflict of interest. He singles out specifically two members of the board, mark drewsson and scott cook of intuit saying they have inherent conflicts of interest. Back up and give people the lay of the land in terms of what is going on. Carl icahn has a big investment in ebay. Over a billion dollars today. He would like to see paypal be spun off from the company. He sees as very much a separate business that is growing very well on its own and would actually be better off in it could focus entirely on what it does and so he is pushing for these. Probably makes more money for him because the spinoff would create more value according to carl icahn. Theoretically. There is an annual meeting coming up in april. Ahead of that meeting, carl is getting out in front of this story, i should point out, pimm, its not necessarily new. People have talked about this for some time now. 41 of ebays overall revenue comes specifically from paypal. People say, gosh, so much of it coming from paypal which is really a different business, it could probably stand on its own. Carl is involved. He is pushing to see this happen. Part of that means getting the board of directors obviously to be ok with that and right now they arent. As john donohoe told me, the c. E. O. Of ebay on street smart just last week, they looked at this. Theyre not planning to do this. They think that ebay and paypal are better off together. Back to what carl had to say today lets listen to lets listen to the conflict of interest that he sees for the board. I have been through a lot of these through the last 30, 40 years, i said in the letter, i mean it, i have never seen one as blatant as this. You know, we have seen a lot of them, but i mean its almost, if it werent sad, it would be funny. So he is saying he has seen a lot of them, he hasnt seen anything quite as bad as this. When i said he was fired up, i wasnt kidding. Take a listen to what he had to say the Company Really said there isnt a conflict of interest when it comes to scott cook being on the board. He has 1 billion and he founded it. They say its a little overlapping. Were trying to get into the processing business. They write these letters, a little bit ofover lap, [beep]. I guess he let that one slip. So as i said, he is worked up about it. Hell be out there campaigning trying to make some change. He was successful at dell, for example, right. He squeezed a little bit more money out of michael dell. He made a little bit more money out of that one. He did get a decent amount of buyback activity out of apple. He is really pushing to try and see paypal be spun off from ebay because he sees it as a better opportunity. Interesting record. You have herb liver, you got to add that to his quiver. So maybe ebay is the next one. We shall see. It will be interesting over the next couple of months. I see lunch between you and carl. Trish, thank you. Carl icahn, that is one story being featured on buzzfeed. This is a news and entertainment website. If masters the art to get you to actually click on the videos or stories, whether you watch them or read them, thats for us to determine. Some clickable headlines include the unnecessarily censored version of finding nemo. Another one, which beatle are you, and which european country do you actually belong in . Any next guests job is to find out how to make money from all of your clicks. Andy is the chief of revenue officer from buzzfeed. He joins us from san francisco. Oining us, johnny manziel, our enior onjon john erlichman. What is the keefe role at buzzfeed . I take all of this traffic and make money for the company. What do you use as your guide is it is it old media, new media, a mix . You have sponsored content. You got original content. Tell us. Yeah, so i have been in Digital Media for 15 years. It always kind of bugged me that the only way to make money is by running banner ads or preroll. We have another take. It has awesome content to share with their friends. We work with brands to create content that people like and share with their friends. So for the first time ever, brands can do word of mouth marketing at scale. John, is this similar to what went on, lets say, in the 1950s and 1960s with Television Programs that were sponsored by individual corporations and they were the ones that provided the funding for original programming . Well, i guess you could argue that buzzfeed has taken a page out of that playbook. Buzzfeed is rewriting the rules of the whole game. Banner ads, we knew they never were that successful. Brands want to be part of the story. It doesnt matter whether its in the written word or in video. Buzzfeed has found this way to get people curious about content, not just the fun stories that you might discover through buzzfeed, but through stuff that is actually sponsored content in which in some cases can be shared amongst people on facebook more than traditional stories. Andy, im wondering if you can give us an example of sponsored content and original content from buzzfeed. Sure. Well, we work with geico which is obviously a very large advertiser. They want people, their customers, to talk about how awesome it is and how delightful it is to be a geico client. Every week we publish stories about delightful things, cute animals, amazing internet names. Were creating this content so people who like geico can share it with their friends. What about an example of original content . We have a team of 150 editors. They publish 400 original stories a day. So it could be hard news. It could be news on the olympics. It could be cat and puppy names. It really doesnt matter. Our goal is to create content that people not only like to read, but they feel compelled to share with their friends. Andy, its john. What if the platform changes a little bit. Obviously everybody is talking about facebooks purchase. If people are sharing stories through what zap, Mark Zucker Berg made it clear, there is no rush to introduce advertising given that the advertising is already in those sponsored stories that you guys have, does that create an opportunity for you . Yeah, i think were a little bit ahead of the curve. A couple months we saw it was blowing up. When people are on buzzfeed and see an interesting story, we make it interesting for them to share it across platforms, facebook, twitter, pinterest, if they like a story, they can share it with their friends across the social web. Andy, isnt there a conflict of interest that you got to walk here . If you got a big advertiser or a company that has sponsored content, youre not necessarily going to write a negative story about them, or would you . Sometimes i wish that was the case. No, just any other media company, we have a wall between church and state. We create content for brands that we think is good. On the other side of the wall, ben smith, our editorinchief is writing new stories and occasionally hell write a story about a particular brand that may or may not be favorable, but just like any other media company, we have a wall between church and state. What do you want to do next in terms of buzzfeeds reach when it comes to original content . One of the things that if your viewers are on facebook, they have seen that buzzfeed has sort of graduated from lists to videos and now one of the big things is these quizzes that seem to be taking the world by storm. What city should you actually in, or what game of thrones character should you actually be . We want to provide this with our advertisers and create fun, interesting quizzes for our brands on buzzfeed. Andy, its john again. If you guys saw the change or the developments with what zap, maybe ahead of the curve, what is the next place that people are going to share this stuff, whether its a quiz or a traditional news story . I think thats a really good question. I think people are getting their news from a variety of sources, whether its their news feed or whether its twitter or whether its pinterest. Buzzfeed is sort of agnostic as to where you get your news. We just want to make it easy for people to either start at buzzfeed and find content to share, or come to buzzfeed because they see a story in what zap or pinterest or twitter. Thank you very much for joining us, andy is the chief revenue officer at buzzfeed and joins us from san francisco. And john, our senior west coast correspondent from los angeles. Coming up, netflix makes a deal to get faster access from the cable operator comcast, but will it be good news for customers . Well have a roundtable debate next. Ts monday, the most decorated athlete in his sport. Lets turn to another big deal in the cable industry. Sources telling bloomberg that netflix has agreed to pay comcast for more direct access to its broadband network. That means more movies streaming to you faster. Also late today, at t is said to be in talks with netflix about creating a more direct connection. The leads could lead to more Reliable Service for net complex customers, but could raise the question about Network Neutrality and costs. Joining us via skype, the executive Vice President of streaming media. Com, from washington, d. C. , the president and chief executive of the group free press and here with me in the studio, thank goodness is bloombergs only alex sherman who has been covering this story extensively. Alex, describe exactly what this is all about. Netflix paying comcast for what . Its a complicated story. It gets really to the heart of how the internet is constructed. So hopefully we can flesh this out in this discussion here. A lot of people have thrown around the term Net Neutrality. That isnt quite what this is. This is a cousin to Net Neutrality. This is a separate outside business agreement between netflix and comcast where netflix has realized that the quality of its product has deflated a bit on comcast and it has decided, all right, for better access directly into your system, we are going to pay you money directly instead of a third party which is what netflix has been paying. Therefore, that money, we dont know exactly how much that money is, but relative standards, it could be 25 million, 50 million a year, Something Like that. So netflix paying comcast for a shinier, faster, newer pipe into the house. This would extend to all Internet Service providers down the road. What do you think about this is this well, i think consumers have a lot of reasons to be concerned here. I think theyre really in the dark on what the terms of this deal are. Most of us who are already subscribers thought we were paying to get netflix as a good threw put, if you will. That is what were paying our 60, 70, 80, 90 a month for. And now the Lousy Service were getting is a comcast negotiating tactic. This is a reason the f. C. C. Needs to be paying attention to some of these deals and providing transparencies so consumers are getting what they paid for. Are consumers getting what they paid for and what is your take . Its good for the consumers. Theyre getting a better quality service. A lot of people are throwing around terms like speed and through put and capacity without understanding what they mean and how the internet works. I. S. P. Is purposely slowing down traffic on its network, its about Net Neutrality. If they have poor connections and links to the networks, its not a Net Neutrality issue. Its good for the customer, they get a better quality Video Service at the same price theyre paying today. Alex, customers from netflix would pay more money to netflix because netflix isnt going to take this out of their pocket, or maybe theyre not . Maybe not. There is no indication that this will happen. Money is shifting hands from one pocket to another pocket. Comcast theoretically makes out here. So there is no real reason i can see why a consumers bill would go up, at least in the near term because of this. You can ask craig, i was going to ask you. Isnt this a case of you pay for what you eat at a restaurant. Why wouldnt you be able to select your cable operator and as a result, if you want comcast to carry your netflix, netflix has to pay . Im already paying comcast to carry my netflix is the thing. Not only am i paying for my dinner, but now netflix is paying extra on top of that. Consumers have really nowhere to turn. Thats the problem. Theyre experiencing degraded service. Their netflix isnt working. They cant do anything about it. Later they hear oh, a deal has been worked out and maybe it will work out in the end. Its good for consumers, except the Actual Experience is that their bills go in one direction, up, up, up, and up some more. They have reasons to be worried about this deal and what is coming next. Is it going to ease the way to a mega merger for comcast and time warner. How much is netflix having to pay . Who gets a shot at this deal. Those are questions that consumers cant get a clear picture of at this point. Clearly the debate will continue. I want to thank craig of free press in washington, dan of streaming media. Com and, of course, bloombergs own alex sherman. Coming up on taking stock, an Online Exchange that treats Information Technology hardware, computers, printers, monitors and gives them a second life and you can buy them. Well give you the details next. Technology, its obsolete by the time that you figure out how to works. My next guest is at the orefront of the supply and demand. Frank believes that hardware is a commodity. He is treating it just like one, with an Online Exchange. Welcome, frank, thanks for being here. The i and the t are capitalized in the Information Technology. Tell people, how do you describe this online marketplace, what goes on behind the scenes . So were really just bringing enterprise demand and supply in one central place. Everything is b to b. Were thinking, as you said, i. T. Hardware is a commodity. We like to say why not trade it like one. Were building effectively the New York Stock Exchange of the i. T. It allows a big bank or Financial Services or truex change, any of their Data Center Equipment the ability of trading the physical infrastructure and connecting them with other multinational Global Companies that want to buy the infrastructure. Were aggregating demand and supply in one central base giving them the basis to trade on price and connecting the two. Basically acting almost like a stub hub of i. T. Today we had the news that ford is not going to be using the windows, the microsoftbased Window Systems for its nsync dashboard entertainment system, theyre going with the Blackberry Software solution. If this was an i. T. Solution, we have the windows machines, were not using them. Were putting something new in. Lets figure out what are we going to do . We are not going to throw them away or donate them. We could, thats where you woman come in, right . They buy them as a capital asset. They degree meeshate. Down to zero as fast as humanly possible. This enterprise and ford wants to get rid of the old and go on to the new. The issue is, there is another buyer out there as a business that is using the same windows machine. Were that Central Clearing firm to bring buy side and sell side together. Can you give us an idea of price so people can understand the volume and price that exist in what kind of machines . Were talking anything big iron, tim, anything within a data center. Anything cisco, oracle, juniper, that physical structure. We have gone from 9 billion of order flow on the order 100 billion. Do you physically have to go and visit the potential suppliers of all of this stuff, or lets get the word out online and hopefully theyll dump a lot of their stuff online . Ill describe sort of the process. The short answer is no. We dont take a physical position on any of it nor do we need to go into anybodys environment. Everything is sitting in sort of a fixed asset schedule on a system of where all of their supply is basically housed. Well tap into that via an a. P. I. And pull their information out and tell them in realtime what the market to market value is. At the same time we know the other Multinational Companies that are using that infrastructure and were connecting them. The issue is, lets just say its a big bank that is selling 1 billion worth of equipment a year. Theyre bringing in out of the exchange, we tell them what the market to market value is. At the same time we bring a big cloud provider that wants to buy the same type of equipment. They go to market and find out. Exactly. Well leave it there. The founder and chief executive, this is taking stock. This is taking stock. I am pimm fox. I want to go right to my radio cohost, carol massar. Defense secretary chuck hagel outlined a fiveyear budget that would shrink army forces. They would be reduced by six percent to levels lower before the attacks of september 1. It outlined a retirement for older weapons and aircraft. There will be a hearing over the comcast and time warner mercurier after comcast agreed to buy ti