Valleywag
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Recap
The week that just wasn't funny
We make fun of everything here, even death. But it's still too soon to laugh over the three SiPort employees gunned down by a coworker, or the misguided teenager who overdosed live on Justin.tv. That said, next week will be open season on the newest little Googler and Barack Obama's Warcraft-addicted policymaker. Life goes on, and we have a job to do. (Photo by acaben) -
Caption Contest
Sorry, but Caption Contest is no longer with the company
Layoffs suck. At least we're still alive. But still: Next week, I'll handle Valleywag all by myself while Owen takes an overdue vacation. Week after that, I'll be gone and Owen, my partner in misbehavior since 1996, will go back to early 2007's org chart: Owen Thomas, Owen Thomas, and Owen Thomas. (I have work, don't worry.) No crying allowed, but this is our last caption contest so please, please, make it a good one. We'll take the best comment and turn it into this post's permanent, permanent headline. Yesterday's winner is longtailwagsthevalley, for "I'm born lucky." (Photo by Jason Calacanis) -
Paul Allen
Microsoft billionaire's low-profile MySpace page
"Merman" shares a birthday and a favorite musician — Jimi Hendrix — with chubby-but-hardrocking guitarist Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder behind Seattle's Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Hall of Fame. After Seattle-based blogger Todd Bishop posted on TechFlash this morning, Merman took his profile private. Here's what Bishop saw: More » -
rumormonger
Music community Buzznet lays off 10 out of 89
"15 people laid off there today," says a tipster via email. "On a FRIDAY... Ouch. Have confirmation it’s across the board (sales, product, development etc.)" Our tipster didn't get it quite right — a company official says it was actually 10 out of 89 employees — just above the fashionable 10-percent cut high-profile VC firm Sequoia Capital established with its doom-and-gloom memo. Dear Buzznet employees: Please email us. -
spamhaus
Microsoft now 5th worst ISP for spam
"Spammers and scam artists are abusing Microsoft's live.com and livefilestore.com properties to redirect visitors to sites that peddle fake pharmacy products, porn and Nigerian 419 scams." That's how WaPo security blogger Brian Krebs explains Microsoft's appearance on the list of Top 10 Worst Spam Service ISPs maintained by the non-profit Spamhaus Project. Krebs got a non-denial denial from Microsoft that overlooks the fact that many of the scams have been high-profile examples for months. As Krebs points out, even the directionless dweebs at Yahoo (I'm paraphrasing) fixed this problem on their own sites. -
online advertising
The death of conversational marketing
An unproar in the world of tech blogs is uncovering a broader fault line between writers and advertisers. Om Malik's GigaOm and his other blogs have dropped their outside ad-sales firm, Federated Media, a startup run by John Battelle. Federated isn't just another ad network, nor is Battelle just another entrepreneur; he helped start Wired and The Industry Standard and an author of a book about Google, thinks that the future of marketing is conversations. And he launched Federated around that notion. Rather than shouting at readers with ads, marketers will use blogs to engage with their readers — and pay handsomely for the privilege. That's his theory, at any rate, which he is expounding in a forthcoming book. More » -
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blogging for dollars
Guy Kawasaki writes his own blog -- well, except that one really popular post
This is why people love Apple executive turned venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki, whether or not he knows what he's talking about. At a Commonwealth Club event, Kawasaki was asked about his insanely popular "Ten Ways to use LinkedIn." Watch him squirm for a minute before 'fessing up: LinkedIn flack Kay Luo provided Guy with his talking points for the post. "I really needed a post — it was four days!" Guy, next time feel free to raid our inbox. We get more helpfully-already-written posts than we'd ever imagined possible. -
Thanks Sponsors
Sponsor Shout-out
Thanks to this week's sponsors: Chevy Fuel Solutions, Cingular, Energizer, Gyration Air Mouse, HP MediaSmart Server, Livescribe, The Mercury Group, MSN, The New York Times Magazine, Nokia, Pernod, Register.com, Rovio, Sharp, Toshiba, Zune. To become an advertiser, click here. -
Jackpot
Is the great Facebook stock sale over?
Through the golden heart of every world-changing startup pulses an avaricious get-rich-quick scheme. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the billionaire-boy cofounders of Google, established this doing-well-by-doing-good myth. But Mark Zuckerberg hasn't been able to make the same magic happen for his employees. In his efforts to make good by them, he may end up quashing a nascent market in Facebook shares. More » -
job descriptions from the future
Mysterious billionaires seek editor who doesn't exist
Into the jaws of an advertising recession comes the launch of the most hubristic media venture we've heard of: a "super-stealth new online company backed and funded by some legendary billionaires." The requirements for the top job go from laugh line to laugh line. More »
San Francisco, 7:18 AM
Sun Nov 23
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