VentureBeat

(Update: IAC’s venture arm will be called Primal Ventures)

IAC, the New York media conglomerate run by Darry Diller, and owner of Match.com, Ticketmaster and Evite.com, is opening up a venture capital investment arm in San Francisco.

It will be run by Match.com’s chief executive Jim Safka, according to the Mercury News. Safka will focus investments on companies in the wireless, video, recruitment and consumer health areas — all fairly predictable areas, given that they are hot. Indeed, we should point out that corporate venture activities such as this tend to be momentum driven: They are last to enter venture capital game (IAC has never invested alongside other venture firms) and first to leave when things get rough. Who knows whether IAC will break the mold, but the Merc points out reasons why start-ups may want to take caution before playing with a giant that can be controlling and aggressive. More skepticism here.

Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive of InterActive Corp., the large Internet conglomerate (owner of Expedia, CitySearch, Evite, Ask) responds to the accusation by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof that his $469 million salary is too high, and that he is lazy.

Diller (pictured here, at right) calls the New York Times’ editorial policy on executive compensation “loony.” The original Kristof column is here (ignore the photo in the link’s article; the Sun-Sentinel has the wrong Kristof).

There’s bad blood here, because Arthur Sulzberger (pictured at left), chairman of The New York Times Co., confronted Diller on stage during the Web 2.0 conference, the same day the Kristof piece was published. Sulzberger presented Diller with a plaque of the piece, who dropped it on the floor after a forced chuckle.

Separately, Diller also says Internet valuations are too high right now.

(Via Kedrosky, who’s link doesn’t appear to be working.)

(Photo credit JD Lasica.)