Through Group Dating, Getting to Know You (and You and You)

Nicole Weiss, 25, an aspiring singer, songwriter and actress who lives in Astoria, Queens, showed a smartphone photo of herself working as a clown for children’s parties to Matt Hunziker, a bearded 28-year-old writer and improv comedy performer who lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, who shook his fists in apparent delight. Laura McDonald, 25, an actress living in the financial district, told Mike Greene, a 27-year-old architect living in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, that “I’m pretty well known for my Kristen Stewart impressions.”

And Alex Blum, 25, a law student living in the East Village, bought a second round of drinks and spoke to Julie Sygiel, 25, who has a start-up lingerie line and lives in Midtown, about his family’s hardware business.

Discussing alma maters, odd jobs and Zooey Deschanel, the six seemed surprisingly comfortable, considering that none had met before. They had been set up by the Dating Ring, a matchmaking service that facilitates group dating.

“Traditional online dating takes too much time,” said Lauren Kay, 24, a founder of the Dating Ring, which is headquartered in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and started last spring. She requires potential daters to meet with an in-house matchmaker, Emma Tessler, 25, before being set up, at the cost of $20 a date, in groups of three single men and women (with smaller groups of four for gay members, in response to their feedback, Ms. Kay said).

“A group maximizes the chances that you’ll hit it off with someone,” Ms. Kay said. “If you’re not attracted to anyone, it’s a good night and you try it again.”

The Dating Ring is one of several companies banking on the idea that getting to know people in small clusters is more intuitive and less awkward and pressure-filled than meeting one-on-one.

This is because group dating is simply a version of general night life, said Abel Acuña, 25, a founder of Martini, a group-dating service in New York, Paris, London and Seoul, South Korea.

“My friends go out in groups together,” he said. “It makes sense for services to replicate what they’re seeing in real life.”

Part of the appeal, participants say, is that these services make fewer claims about arranging romance, promising only the low-stress opportunity of hanging out — or as Mr. Acuña puts it, “the joy of meeting up” — whether one is interested in friendship, networking or something more.

“It leaves less of a scripted experience,” said Matt Hamilton, a 24-year-old software engineer who lives in the meatpacking district and met his girlfriend via the Dating Ring. “You have more freedom, you go with the flow of conversation.”

And even if the night is a bust, at least sometimes you will walk away with a full stomach: Dating in Groups, in Washington, D.C., and Grubwithus, in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Venice, offer their users prepackaged dates at restaurants.

Grouper, a company in SoHo, goes further, billing itself as a social club, somewhat de-emphasizing romantic connections. Each user signing up for the service, which also costs $20, is matched with another user; both participants commit to bringing two friends to the date.

“The breakdown is kind of like a bar; the vast majority is single but there are roommates and co-workers who might not be single but are there for moral support,” said Grouper’s chief executive, Michael Waxman, 26, who said he met his girlfriend of two years on a Grouper date. “We’ve seen engagements and serious relationships to friend groups merging together.”

Mary Leigh Bliss, 30, the trends editor at Ypulse, a youth-oriented research firm, said that such organizations make sense to what is known as the millennial generation.

“They are team-oriented individuals who would much rather cultivate experiences together than on their own,” she said. “They want to be around each other in real life and have experiences that are really collaborative. The digital is the means to the ends, which is the in-person meet-up.”

Some larger, more traditional online dating companies are also discovering the allure of the crowd.

“We are less excited about small groups and more excited about groups that are 12 and higher,” said Sam Yagan, 36, a founder of OKCupid.com and the chief executive of Match.com.

Match, which is the world’s largest dating site, holds events called Stir, at which users meet for activities like sushi-making classes or D.J. lessons. These events have two advantages, Mr. Yagan said.

“You’re more likely to have fun even with no romantic spark,” he said. “And there’s a context and something to focus the time around.”

He said group dating offers a different appeal to men and women.

“Women like to be with other women,” Mr. Yagan said. “Men just like the volume.”

If nothing else, group dating offers safety in numbers, both physical and mental.

Bits: Children’s Advocacy Group Faults Learning Apps for Babies

Labor Rights Group Accuses iPhone Maker of Abuses

The rights group, China Labor Watch, based in New York, said it had found violations of the law and of Apple’s pledges about working conditions at factories operated by the Taiwanese company, Pegatron.

Conditions in Chinese factories that produce iPhones and other popular Apple products have been under scrutiny after complaints about labor and environmental violations by another Taiwanese supplier, Foxconn.

Apple said in a statement that it was “committed to providing safe and fair working conditions” and would investigate the claims about Pegatron.

In a separate statement, Pegatron’s chief executive, Jason Cheng, also promised to investigate. China Labor Watch said its investigation covered two factories in Shanghai and one in nearby Suzhou that employ a total of 70,000 people. It found violations including discrimination against ethnic minorities and women, excessive work hours, poor living conditions, health and safety problems and pollution.

Pegatron assembles products including the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 for Apple, according to the report.

Apple said it had confirmed one accusation by China Labor Watch — that the identity cards of some workers were being held by management — and had told Pegatron to stop.

Apple has published a code of conduct for its suppliers and joined the Fair Labor Association, a worker rights monitoring group.

The association inspected Foxconn factories early last year and said in August that improvements it had recommended were being carried out ahead of schedule.

Conditions in factories in China are a sensitive issue for foreign companies that outsource the production of shoes, consumer electronics and other goods to contractors.

In its report Monday, China Labor Watch said the majority of Pegatron production employees worked 66 to 69 hours a week, far above China’s legal limit of 49 hours. It said pregnant women were sometimes required to work 11-hour days, more than the eight-hour legal limit, and employees were under pressure to falsify time cards to conceal the violations.

The group accused Pegatron of “discriminatory hiring practices” including refusing to hire those older than 35 or members of the Hui, Tibetan or Uighur ethnic minorities.

The group said production line workers sometimes dumped water laced with hazardous chemicals from cutting tools into sewers.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, said it would send auditors to three Pegatron facilities this week to investigate the report’s claims.

The company said it had conducted 15 comprehensive audits of Pegatron facilities since 2007, including surprise audits in the past 18 months. It said the audits had covered more than 130,000 employees.

“Apple is committed to providing safe and fair working conditions throughout our supply chain,” the company statement said. “If our audits find that workers have been underpaid or denied compensation for any time they’ve worked, we will require that Pegatron reimburse them in full.”

The company said its own audit had found that Pegatron employees making Apple products worked 46 hours per week on average.

Pegatron, founded in 2008, also manufactures desktop and notebook personal computers, LCD televisions, broadband and wireless systems and other products.

“We take these allegations very seriously,” Mr. Cheng, the Pegatron chief, said in a statement. “We will investigate them fully and take immediate actions to correct any violations to Chinese labor laws and our own code of conduct.”

Advertising: Nonprofit Group to Help For-Profit Marketers Reach Youth

In keeping with an approach at Do Something to not take itself so seriously, the unit is being named TMI, as in “Too Much Information.” A presentation that Do Something has prepared about the new unit offers this comment under the TMI logo, “Just kidding, there’s never too much info!”

TMI will offer marketers and organizations services like those already used by Do Something in creating cause campaigns, which it promotes each year to its 1.7 million members and other Americans ages 13 to 25.

According to Do Something, more than 2.4 million people took action through the organization in response to 25 cause campaigns in 2012. Those services include research, strategy related to mobile devices and text messaging, social media and Web site production.

TMI will also offer marketers a chance to use its services to reach consumers who are older and outside the Do Something demographic sweet spot.

TMI is being led by Aria Finger, as president. She is also chief operating officer at Do Something in New York. Similarly, staff members of Do Something will also work on TMI assignments. Mobile Commons, a mobile technology and strategy company in Brooklyn that works with Do Something on its cause campaigns, will also work with TMI.

The formation of TMI is indicative of how much time and attention Madison Avenue continues to devote to figuring out the best methods of wooing the youth market, particularly the so-called millennials, who are teenagers through about age 30.

Another example occurred in February, when MRY — an agency in New York, formerly known as Mr. Youth, that specializes in youth marketing and social media — absorbed the North American operations of the giant digital agency LBi in a reorganization by the new LBi parent, the Publicis Groupe.

“The demand is there,” Ms. Finger, 30, said in a telephone interview. “Over the years, our corporate and nonprofit partners have said, ‘Can you come in and consult with us? Teach us about social? Teach us about mobile?’ But we didn’t have the bandwidth.”

TMI will follow Do Something’s lead in the types of clients it will accept. For instance, Ms. Finger said, “neither Do Something nor TMI would partner with a liquor company or a tobacco company.”

Asked about other sorts of marketers that may be under scrutiny for the kinds of products they sell, she replied: “We’d have to weigh the pluses and minuses. You need to be pragmatic.”

What about, for instance, a soft-drink maker? “I drink a Diet Coke every once in a while,” Ms. Finger said, laughing.

She expressed a similar attitude when discussing what TMI means, describing it as “sort of tongue in cheek, ‘We have too much information and we want to share it.’ ”

TMI’s initial clients include Pearson, the education and media company, which will work with it on products that teach English as a second language and are sold in countries like Brazil, China, India and Indonesia.

“Do Something has done an amazing job communicating with an audience that is the most hard to keep engaged,” said Bhav Singh, president for Pearson English and informal learning in London, particularly through its use of S.M.S., or text messages, to reach its young members.

“And the fact it’s a not-for-profit organization, and do this with a shoestring budget, means they know how to do more with less, or very little,” he added. “TMI will guide us on both parameters, helping us interact with youth in a manner that’s cost effective as we build our mobile learning solutions, and that’s a win-win.”

Aéropostale, the retailer, is considering working with TMI after six years of collaborating with Do Something on a program, Teens for Jeans, that has donated 3.5 million pairs of jeans to homeless teenagers, said Scott Birnbaum, senior vice president for marketing and e-commerce at Aéropostale in New York.

“Do Something is so knowledgeable about teenagers and their desire for change, and this move to share that wealth of knowledge with more people is, I think, terrific,” he added. “I can’t imagine we’re not going to be involved with TMI.”

TMI, as a unit of Do Something, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, will also operate as a nonprofit group. Asked if that was an unfair advantage over profit-making agencies and companies that specialize in youth marketing, Ms. Finger replied, “Our true ‘unfair advantage’ comes from our access to young people.”

“There is a possibility,” she added, that TMI could be “spun out as a for-profit, as we grow.”

DealBook: Investor Group Buys BMC for $6.9 Billion

Jon Simon/Feature Photo Service for BMC SoftwareShamoun Murtza of BMC Software demonstrates a new mobile application.

BMC Software Inc. agreed on Monday to sell itself to a group of investors led by Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital for about $6.9 billion, completing a campaign by an activist hedge fund to push the company into a deal.

Under the deal terms, the buyers’ group, which includes the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation and Insight Venture Partners, will pay $46.25 a share in cash.

That represents a 14 percent premium to BMC’s share price on May 11, 2012, the last business day before the company disclosed that Elliott Management had taken a big stake – now up to about 9.6 percent – and was urging a sale. After initially resisting Elliott, the two sides reached a compromise, with Elliott gaining two board seats and BMC beginning to explore a sale last fall.

A number of buyout firms emerged during the auction process over recent months, though by last week the Bain and Golden Gate consortium took the lead.

“After a thorough review of strategic alternatives, the BMC board of directors is pleased to reach this agreement, which provides shareholders with immediate and substantial cash value, as well as a premium to our unaffected share price,” Robert E. Beauchamp, BMC’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.

Jesse Cohn, the Elliott portfolio manager who led the firm’s campaign, added: “Elliott applauds the BMC Software board and executive leadership for delivering this value-maximizing outcome for stockholders, which both contains a go-shop provision and reflects what we believe is a substantial premium to BMC’s unaffected stock price.”

As part of the deal, BMC will have 30 days to try to find higher bids.

Credit Suisse, the Royal Bank of Canada and Barclays will provide debt financing.

BMC was advised by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. The investors received financial advice from Qatalyst Partners, the boutique bank run by Frank P. Quattrone; Credit Suisse; RBC Capital Markets; and Barclays.

The investor group was counseled by Kirkland & Ellis and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation was also advised by Sidley Austin, while Insight Venture Partners was also advised by Willkie Farr & Gallagher.

Australia Arrests Professed Head of Hacking Group

The Australian Federal Police said that they arrested the 24-year-old Australian citizen on Tuesday night in connection with an attack on an unspecified Australian government Web site this month. The unidentified man, who faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted on two hacking-related charges, is said to have used his position as an I.T. specialist at a Sydney-based company to access confidential information from clients including the Australian government.

“The A.F.P. has zero tolerance for this kind of behavior,” Glen McEwen, manager of cybercrime operations for the Australian Federal Police, said at a news conference on Wednesday. “There were no denials of his claims of being the leader.”

“The A.F.P. believes this man’s skill sets and access to this kind of information presented a considerable risk to Australian society,” Mr. McEwen added.

LulzSec, which draws its name from a combination of “lulz” — an Internet coinage derived from “lol” for “laughing out loud” — and “security,” is a diffuse online community of so-called hacktivists.

These hackers differ from mainstream computer criminals in that they claim to be motivated by ideals as opposed to financial gain. The group is reported to have grown out of Anonymous, another ideologically motivated hacking group, and has claimed responsibility for computer attacks on Sony Pictures, Nintendo and a British newspaper, The Sun, owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Both groups first gained widespread publicity in 2010 when they waged a series of coordinated cyberattacks in retaliation for efforts to shut down the Web site of the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks.

LulzSec is also said to have breached a number of Australian government and university Web sites in 2011. Anonymous claimed responsibility for taking down roughly 10 Australian government Web sites as part of a protest against plans to compel Australian Internet service providers to make private user data available to the country’s security services.

The Australian police said that the arrested man, who goes by the online moniker Aush0k, had repeatedly asserted in online forums that he was the group’s leader. The suspect’s online activities had brought him to the attention of international law enforcement authorities before the attack that led to his arrest, the federal police said.

His arrest added to a recent string of setbacks for the organization, whose members have been increasingly been targets of law enforcement officials in the United States and Europe.

Last year, it was revealed that LulzSec’s previous leader, Hector Xavier Monsegur, known online as Sabu, had been providing federal law enforcement officials with information on the hacking group as part of a plea bargain after his arrest in 2011.

More recently, an American member of LulzSec, Cody Kretsinger, was sentenced last week by a Los Angeles court to one year in prison for his role in a LulzSec attack on Sony Pictures. Mr. Kretsinger, who used the online moniker Recursion, also pleaded guilty as part of an agreement with prosecutors.

DealBook: Alfa Group to Offer Rival Bid for Russian Cellphone Operator

LONDON — A bidding war has broken out for the cell phone operator Tele2 Russia.

The Russian investment firm Alfa Group said on Thursday that it would offer up to $4 billion to buy the cell phone operator, the Russian unit of the Swedish telecommunications company Tele2. The Alfa Group announced the bid after Tele2 agreed to sell the unit to the VTB Group, a Russian bank, for $2.4 billion, plus debt.

The Alfa Group, whose chairman is the Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, said VTB’s offer for Tele2 Russia undervalued the cellphone operator, adding that it was also considering an offer to buy the rest of Tele2’s operations.

The Alfa Group “is interested and willing to agree to a purchase price for the remaining assets of Tele2 over a very short period of time,” it said in a statement on Thursday. The Alfa Group also holds a majority stake in the Russian cellphone company VimpelCom.

Shares in Tele2 rose 3.5 percent in morning trading in Stockholm on Thursday.

Media Decoder: Editor Charged With Aiding Hackers Group

8:30 p.m. | Updated Matthew Keys, a 26-year-old deputy social media editor at Thomson Reuters, has been charged with assisting the hacking collective Anonymous in an attack on the Web site of The Los Angeles Times, the Justice Department said Thursday.

A federal indictment of Mr. Keys, formerly a Web producer at KTXL Fox 40, which, like The Los Angeles Times, is owned by the Tribune Company, said that he went by a user name of “AESCracked” and assisted in a cyberattack on the newspaper’s Web site. The attack reportedly allowed the group to gain access and alter a news feature.

The three-count indictment includes charges that  Mr. Keys provided Anonymous with login information for computers owned by the Tribune Company. The indictment also states that he encouraged the hackers, with whom he worked from Dec. 10 to Dec. 15, 2010, to log on to the Tribune Company server “to make unauthorized changes to Web sites” owned by the company and “to damage computer systems” used at the Tribune Company.

A Los Angeles Times news article with the headline “Pressure Builds in House to Pass Tax-Cut Package” was renamed “Pressure Builds in the House to Elect CHIPPY 1337,” according to the indictment.

If convicted, Mr. Keys could face up to 10 years in prison for each substantive count and three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000 for each count, the Justice Department said in a news release. A spokesman for Reuters said that the news organization was aware of the charges against Mr. Keys and that the alleged misconduct occurred before Mr. Keys joined Reuters in 2012. A spokesman for Tribune Company declined to comment.

The charges came as a shock in social media circles where Mr. Keys, considered a wunderkind of new media, cut a popular presence, including being named one of Time Magazine’s 140 best Twitter feeds. But the tsunami of social media also appeared to have taken a toll on Mr. Keys.

After posting more than 46,000 Twitter messages, Mr. Keys publicly took a break from the social media Web site. In an interview with Ad Week in July, he said Twitter had kept him up at night. “I got sucked into that. I loved it. I still love it. But at some point you have to take a break,” Mr. Keys said. (In a Twitter post on Thursday, Mr. Keys again said he intended to take a break.)

The length of his potential sentence reignited online protests on Thursday over the way federal prosecutors approached the Internet. Those protests from open Internet proponents like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, exploded in January after the computer programming prodigy Aaron Swartz, also 26 and facing federal charges related to hacking, committed suicide.

The charges against Mr. Keys came as other media organizations were facing computer threats. Chinese hackers have compromised the computer systems of several major United States media organizations, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The Ministry of National Defense of China has denied any involvement in the attacks.

On Wednesday, President Obama met with chief executives to discuss digital security legislation. In an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, he acknowledged the “ramping up of cybersecurity threats.”

Anonymous, a nebulous and global collective of so-called hactivists, often use computers in protesting or supporting political causes. The group demanded Christmas dinner be provided to Pfc. Bradley Manning, the former Army intelligence officer arrested in 2010 on accusations of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks.

In a Twitter message posted last year, Hector Xavier Monsegur, a hacker known as “Sabu” who led a  hacking collective and worked as an F.B.I. informant, accused Mr. Keys of playing a part in hacking into The Los Angeles Times.

Mr. Keys has written about Sabu and Anonymous for Reuters and been associated with hacking groups in the past, including in a Gawker article that identified him as a “journalist who infiltrated” Anonymous.

“I identified myself as a journalist during my interaction with top-level Anonymous hackers,” Mr. Keys wrote on his personal blog in response to the Gawker article.

The charges against Mr. Keys were first reported by The Huffington Post.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 16, 2013

An earlier version of this post erroneously included Bloomberg News among media organizations whose computer systems were compromised by Chinese hackers. Bloomberg News said its computer systems were targeted, but not compromised.

Natina Reed, of R&B group Blaque, dead at 32 after being hit by car

Tragic news has come out of the music world as Natina Reed, of the nineties R&B group Blaque was struck by a car in Georgia on Friday, Oct. 26, 2012 and killed. She was only 32-years-old.

The Gwinnett Police Department says that the driver of the vehicle that hit Reed called 911 right at 10:30 p.m. on Friday night to advise of the situation. 29 minutes later, Reed was pronounced dead at Gwinnett Medical Center.

View slideshow: Natina Reed was only 32-years-old when she was struck by a car and killed
The press release handed out stated that Reed:

"…was in the roadway on Lawrenceville Highway near Hamilton Road when struck."

Natina Reed was struck by a car and killed at the young age of 32.
Photo credit:  MTV / TMZ

Video: Blaque – "As If" music video
An investigation is currently ongoing by police, but they do say that the driver "was determined to be not at fault and there are no charges pending."

There is no word at this time if the driver was under the influence of any drugs or whether alcohol was involved or not. It is not believed that this was a driving under the influence issue since no charges have been filed.

Video: Blaque – "As If" music video

Reed had a career with the singing group Blaque, but also had a role in the 2000 cheerleader film, "Bring It On." She was a friend and protege of the late singer and actress, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes.

Surviving Reed is her 10-year-old son Tren Brown, whom she had with rapper Kurupt.

via Natina Reed, of R&B group Blaque, dead at 32 after being hit by car – Orlando Pop Culture | Examiner.com.

Anti-Semitic Tweets Removed, French Jewish Group Says

The agreement was announced by lawyers for the Union of Jewish Students of France, who had a conference call with Twitter representatives in California on Thursday evening. The posts had produced increasing criticism and outrage over the last week from the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France and from SOS Racisme, a lobbying group that denounced a “wave of feverish hatred.” Some of the posts had been removed as of Friday evening.

The anti-Semitic posts sometimes included photos from the Holocaust and a variety of jokes. There were also anti-Muslim posts. The student union had threatened to get an injunction under French law, which prohibits discrimination based on religion, ethnicity or race, one of its lawyers, Stéphane Lilti, told French news agencies.

Several Twitter users posting under the hashtag criticized the decision to delete the anti-Semitic posts, calling it censorship. A user calling himself Andre said: “Better to educate than censure. Shame on you Twitter.” Another, Craig McLeod, asked, “Who decides what is anti-Semitic and abusive?”

Asked for comment, Twitter repeated its standard policy statement: “Twitter does not mediate content. If we are alerted to content that may be in violation of our terms of service, we will investigate each report and respond according to the policies and procedures outlined in our support pages.”

No one at Twitter would talk on the record about the French posts, but it has its own criteria for regulating content and will sometimes suspend an individual account or withhold individual posts.

In Germany on Thursday, Twitter applied for the first time a policy known as “country-withheld content,” which allows it to block an account at the request of state authorities. The neo-Nazi group had been banned by the government of Lower Saxony.

In the French case, the student union said it was providing Twitter with a longer list of what it considered particularly offensive posts using the same hashtag. Jewish groups in France have cited an increasing number of anti-Semitic episodes since a French Muslim, Mohammed Merah, who claimed to be allied with Al Qaeda, murdered seven people, including four Jews, in Toulouse in March before being killed in a shootout with the police.

“We salute the decision of Twitter to respond to our request and promptly remove racist and anti-Semitic tweets,” said the president of the student union, Jonathan Hayoun. He said the union still intended to file a complaint against the company, which has refused to identify the people behind the posts.

Two other cases involving Twitter created news this week. On Friday in Britain, the police were investigating remarks that appeared on the Twitter account of a right-wing political leader about a case of discrimination against a gay couple who were refused accommodation by the owners of a lodging house.

British news reports said the account — @nickgriffinmep — had been suspended after it was used to publish the couple’s address and call for a demonstration there. It later appeared to have been reactivated without the couple’s address.

The account belongs to Nick Griffin, the British National Party chairman and a member of the European Parliament. The party is a small, xenophobic group that has made electoral gains in recent years, culminating in Mr. Griffin’s election to the European Parliament in 2009. The party campaigned on a platform opposed to what Mr. Griffin calls the “creeping Islamification” of Britain, supporting the voluntary repatriation of immigrants, and calling for Britain to quit the European Union and NATO.

Mr. Griffin reacted angrily to the lodging house case, telling the BBC that discrimination was “a fundamental human right” and that the owners of the lodging house had the right to decide who could enter their home.

And at a hearing in Istanbul on Thursday, a Turkish pianist and composer, Fazil Say, 42, denied charges of insulting religion after he cited a thousand-year-old poem on his Twitter account. The case was adjourned for four months.

In April, Mr. Say reposted a verse in which Omar Khayyám, an 11th-century Persian poet, mocked pious hypocrisy. His case is an indication, critics say, of an increasing distortion of justice by a more conservative interpretation of Islam promoted by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Twitter has said that its goal is to balance freedom of expression with compliance with local laws.

Van Heyst Group Aims to Turn Company Events Into Media Gold

Like the founders of the TED conferences after her, Della van Heyst understood the importance of putting smart people in front of an audience to express their ideas.

Back in the digital dark ages of the late 1970s, she introduced a conference that became the influential Stanford Publishing Course, a two-week retreat for people in the publishing industry. Over the years, industry luminaries like Nan Talese, Lewis Lapham and Helen Gurley Brown, as well as rising technology stars like Jeff Bezos, taught at the conference. From that success grew the Van Heyst Group, which Della ran with her daughter, Carrie, to plan conferences for large companies.

But a few years ago, Della was preparing to retire. (She is now 73.) It was then that Carrie faced “a dark night of the soul,” she said, as she wondered whether she could keep running the company.

In 2009, Della was continuing to orchestrate live conversations among business leaders, academics and celebrities, for clients that included Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Fortune over the years. But the recession was unkind to the events business, which is notoriously cyclical anyway. The Van Heyst Group’s revenue plunged when companies cut back on live events.

Her daughter’s concerns went beyond the financial. “The C.E.O.’s we deal with are remarkable people, but I feel like the issues they’re discussing belong to everybody,” Carrie said. “These very important conversations, which were the heart of our business, happened behind closed doors.”

She wondered: Was there a way to open the company’s events to more people? And could she add her own stamp to a business that was closely identified with her vibrant and inventive mother?

Today, Carrie van Heyst, 45, is answering yes to those questions by becoming involved in the media industry’s move toward live publishing — the simultaneous production of live events and spin-off content for print, video, the Web and mobile devices.

In the last few years, publications including The Washington Post, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have introduced or accelerated conference offerings that cover business, political, cultural and other topics.

“It seems counterintuitive that in the digital age, physical events are gaining in popularity,” said Ken Doctor, a media analyst at Outsell Inc., a research firm, adding that, nevertheless, “events have become a significant third stream of revenue, behind circulation and advertising, for media companies.” He predicts that within a few years, live events may account for 20 percent of media company revenue, through a combination of ticket sales, sponsorship and advertising deals.

Some magazines produced conferences in the past, but typically for brand-building, not profit. It wasn’t until the ad drought of 2008 and the rise of social media and mobile computing that companies really started to grasp the potential of live publishing.

The viral success of TED Talks, the slickly produced videos from the TED conferences, helped prove the revenue value of live events combined with online content. One of the most-watched TED talks, by a brain researcher discussing her own stroke, has been viewed more than eight million times.

Although the videos themselves are free, they’ve significantly driven income for the flagship conferences, said Tom Rielly, director of fellows and community at TED.

MR. RIELLY worked with Della van Heyst during her Stanford Publishing days, teaching art directors to use design software. “The course was an elite program that you had to be invited to,” he said. “If you went, you were guaranteed an incredibly high level of schmoozing with movers and shakers in the publishing industry.

“Della was always early on topics,” Mr. Rielly said. “Not too early, but enough to give people a competitive edge.”

After Della left her job as director of strategic planning for the Stanford Alumni Association in 1994  to form the Van Heyst Group, she used her Rolodex to introduce C.E.O.’s and other senior managers to experts in technology and social trends.

At a 1995 Internet boot camp, for instance, she recruited Jerry Yang, a young Stanford graduate student who had just founded Yahoo, to brief Fortune 500 chief executives about the Internet. “I said: ‘Jerry, you have to wear a pressed oxford shirt or these people will not take you seriously. If you don’t have one, I will buy you one,’ ” she said.

Mr. Yang remembers the conversation, but not the shirt.

DealBook: Group Led by BC Partners to Buy Suddenlink for $1.9 Billion

8:16 a.m. | Updated

LONDON – The private equity firm BC Partners and one of Canada’s largest pension funds have agreed to buy the American cable operator Suddenlink Communications in a cash-and-debt deal worth around $6.6 billion.

BC Partners, which has offices in Europe and New York, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board said late on Wednesday that they were teaming up with Suddenlink’s management team, led by the chief executive, Jerald L. Kent, to buy the cable company from its current owners, which include Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, the Quadrangle Group and Oaktree Capital Management.

The private equity firm and Canadian pension fund will provide around a combined $2 billion for the deal and assume Suddenlink’s $4 billion of existing net debt, according to a company statement. The firms also will issue an additional $500 million of unsecured loans provided by Credit Suisse

With Western economies continuing to languish, the cable industry has been a bright spot, as companies look to take advantage of consumer demand for high-speed Internet and television services.

Earlier this year, the Dutch cable operator Ziggo raised around $1 billion in an initial public offering, while the Canadian company Cogeco Cable agreed on Wednesday to pay $1.36 billion for an American company, Atlantic Broadband.

“Cable is an industry we know well in both Europe and the United States, and epitomizes the defensive growth characteristics we typically seek in an investment,” BC Partners’ managing partner, Raymond Svider, said in a statement.

Suddenlink, the seventh-largest cable operator in the United States, provides television, phone and Internet services for about 1.4 million customers from North Carolina to Texas. The company reported revenue of $1.96 billion and a pretax profit of $743 million in the 12 months ended March 31, according to a company statement.

The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.

LionTree Advisors, Goldman Sachs and the law firms Paul Hastings and Seyfarth Shaw advised Suddenlink on the deal, while Credit Suisse and the law firms Latham & Watkins and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz advised BC Partners and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

DealBook: Group Led by BC Partners to Buy Suddenlink for $1.9 Billion

8:16 a.m. | Updated

LONDON – The private equity firm BC Partners and one of Canada’s largest pension funds have agreed to buy the American cable operator Suddenlink Communications in a cash-and-debt deal worth around $6.6 billion.

BC Partners, which has offices in Europe and New York, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board said late on Wednesday that they were teaming up with Suddenlink’s management team, led by the chief executive, Jerald L. Kent, to buy the cable company from its current owners, which include Oaktree Capital Management and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners.

The private equity firm and Canadian pension fund will provide around a combined $2 billion for the deal and assume Suddenlink’s $4 billion of existing net debt, according to a company statement. The firms also will issue an additional $500 million of unsecured loans provided by Credit Suisse

With Western economies continuing to languish, the cable industry has been a bright spot, as companies look to take advantage of consumer demand for high-speed Internet and television services.

Earlier this year, the Dutch cable operator Ziggo raised around $1 billion in an initial public offering, while the Canadian company Cogeco Cable agreed on Wednesday to pay $1.36 billion for an American company, Atlantic Broadband.

“Cable is an industry we know well in both Europe and the United States, and epitomizes the defensive growth characteristics we typically seek in an investment,” BC Partners’ managing partner, Raymond Svider, said in a statement.

Suddenlink, the seventh-largest cable operator in the United States, provides television, phone and Internet services for about 1.4 million customers from North Carolina to Texas. The company reported revenue of $1.96 billion and a pretax profit of $743 million in the 12 months ended March 31, according to a company statement.

The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.

LionTree Advisors, Goldman Sachs and the law firms Paul Hastings and Seyfarth Shaw advised Suddenlink on the deal, while Credit Suisse and the law firms Latham & Watkins and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz advised BC Partners and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.