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bad ideas
bad ideas
Perez Hilton stars on "viral" hottie rating site to promote HIV awareness
PosOrNot.com, conceived as a public education campaign about HIV/AIDS, apes HotOrNot, asks visitors to the site to guess the HIV status of those pictured, based on photos and social network-style profile excerpts. Look, even professional hater Perez Hilton donated his image to the viral antiviral effort! Then again, encouraging testing using a faux dating site is probably wiser than a campaign to get Web-cruising users to disclose their status on a real hookup site, where everyone is allegedly very good looking.
entrepreneusialism
Cause of female entrepreneurs set back decades by website with terrible name
When we were notified of the existence of Ladies Who Launch, a website for women with startups, we suppressed the gag reflex triggered by the name. We then consulted one of our favorite entrepreneuses on exactly how horrified we should be. "Yep, we've talked about a profile," she told us. "But bitcheswhobusiness.com, that would be my website." To be clear, we have nothing against anyone offering women like our IM correspondent "resources, opportunity, community," or, for that matter, publicity. We just can't get past the site's unfortunate moniker.
bad ideas
Page Six's full scoop on Julia Allison's "IT Girls" reality show
Valleywag commenters hate the idea, but the New York Post's Page Six loves IT Girls, the proposed reality TV show with New York umtrepreneurs Julia Allison, Meghan Asha and Mary Rambin.
These three are more career-driven and have more to say than their L.A. counterparts, which should only lead to more drama. Even when they're not hitting Waverly Inn for dinner or flying cross-country for exclusive Silicon Alley [sic] events, this clique is never boring. They get Restylane injections for fun, own pocket-size dogs, and never go anywhere without blogging about it. What's not to love?In the full-spread pic below, the Post speculates, and we can confirm, the show will air on Bravo, if the pilot's picked up. (One correction: Meghan Asha, née Parikh, is the heir to her father's Silicon Valley fortune, but it didn't come from Sun Microsystems.) Set your DVR now. More »
bad ideas
Dumb money on display: A publicly traded Japanese company, CyberAgent, has put $1 million of its shareholders' money on a video search engine called Fooooo, or as its radio ads will surely call it, "that's 'ef' followed by five 'ohs' — 'ef oh oh oh oh oh dot com'!" Sure enough, when I tried to type it in the first time, I botched it. Foooo? Foooooo? Fooey. Next time, dear friends from across the Pacific, spend six figures on acquiring an easily typed domain name. That seems easier.
Japanese video search engine proves impossible to locate
Dumb money on display: A publicly traded Japanese company, CyberAgent, has put $1 million of its shareholders' money on a video search engine called Fooooo, or as its radio ads will surely call it, "that's 'ef' followed by five 'ohs' — 'ef oh oh oh oh oh dot com'!" Sure enough, when I tried to type it in the first time, I botched it. Foooo? Foooooo? Fooey. Next time, dear friends from across the Pacific, spend six figures on acquiring an easily typed domain name. That seems easier.
bad ideas
AOL brass frankly embarrassed by Bebo buy
Why were AOL CEO Randy Falco and COO Ron Grant so secretive about buying Bebo? Because they knew much of AOL management hated the deal, Silicon Alley Insider reports. Executives from AOL subsidiaries Advertising.com, Platform A and Userplane would all have worked to kibosh the $850 million deal if they'd known more about it, so Falco and Grant kept them out of the loop. Supposedly, Grant and Falco pushed ahead with the deal because they think Bebo makes AOL a more attractive acquisition target. One source called the buy "Grant's last stand." Below, SAI's account of precisely what's to hate about Bebo, according to AOL execs. More »
bad ideas
Mashable introduces video commenting, terrifying new reality
Embedding videos into Valleywag comments is as easy as dragging and dropping a YouTube URL into the comments field. One advantage this method holds over Mashable's video comments: Embedding a YouTube video of yourself takes at least one extra step. Trust us: No one wants to hear you talk. Especially me. I get paid by the pageview.
Megan McCarthy unhired by Wired
Former Valleywag party girl Megan McCarthy's all-too-brief career at Wired: admired, hired, inspired, fired. (Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)
Former Valleywag party girl Megan McCarthy's all-too-brief career at Wired: admired, hired, inspired, fired. (Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)
bad ideas
If not in traffic or revenues, where has Bebo leapt ahead of MySpace and Facebook? In turning its social network into a TV channel, says NewTeeVee's Liz Gannes. She credits Bebo president Joanna Shields with figuring out the LonelyGirl15 phenomenon in 2007 and hiring the show's creators. Thus was born KateModern, which has been seen some 30 million times, earning exactly $405,000. Expect more of that, the pro-Bebo argument goes, now that the company is tied up with media giant Time Warner. With 2,099 more hits like that, and the deal might pay off.
Time Warner shareholders, blame LonelyGirl15 for the $850 million Bebo buy
If not in traffic or revenues, where has Bebo leapt ahead of MySpace and Facebook? In turning its social network into a TV channel, says NewTeeVee's Liz Gannes. She credits Bebo president Joanna Shields with figuring out the LonelyGirl15 phenomenon in 2007 and hiring the show's creators. Thus was born KateModern, which has been seen some 30 million times, earning exactly $405,000. Expect more of that, the pro-Bebo argument goes, now that the company is tied up with media giant Time Warner. With 2,099 more hits like that, and the deal might pay off.
bad ideas
Sequoia clones unsuccessful search engine -- maybe Google will buy it anyway
Sequoia partner Mark Kvamme just plunked down $31 million on a company he also chairs, called Searchme. It's an image-based search engine. Search is a crowded field but Searchme CEO Randy Adams thinks there's room for innovation. "Search," he told BoomTown, "is still largely a text and list experience." True, but Snap CEO Tom McGovern told me almost the exact same thing in May 2006. Didn't work out for him. Now Snap is a site for bloggers. Below, a video demonstration of Searchme's "innovation" and another video showing two-year-old Snap doing pretty much the same things.More »
bad ideas
Yahoo gives up on improving search results
When all else fails, declare yourself "open." Netscape first pulled this maneuver in the late 1990s; the Netscape browser is now extinct. Yahoo has declared its search results open to improvement. Website publishers are encouraged to submit ideas for prettying up Yahoo search — presumably to include prominent links to their sites. How this is supposed to make Yahoo search results better, it's not clear; won't it just fill them with promotional spam? We'll leave you with this wisdom from a guy with a blog:When I hear a big company use the term "open," I almost immediately assume they mean "to fucking me."
bad ideas
JuicyCampus founder Matt Ivester created a site that allows college students to anonymously post gossip and rumors about each other. With threads like "Who is the sluttiest girl??????," it's been popular with the kids. The lawyers, too. Now Ivester wants users to know "hate isn't juicy":
More »
JuicyCampus founder wants to take it all back
JuicyCampus founder Matt Ivester created a site that allows college students to anonymously post gossip and rumors about each other. With threads like "Who is the sluttiest girl??????," it's been popular with the kids. The lawyers, too. Now Ivester wants users to know "hate isn't juicy":
More »
bad ideas
Spielberg's next opus: a social network for tinfoil-wearing nutjobs?
Steven Spielberg, who allegedly believes in ghosts, is launching a social network for other tinfoil-wearing crazies. Thank god they'll all be corralled in one place; fear that they might find a leader and organize.
bad ideas
Google's onto its new thing, Google Health, and CEO Eric Schmidt is off on the road to promote the product. Stiffly. Too bad he's above taking lessons from the recent past. Back in the 1990s, Silicon Graphics and Netscape founder Jim Clark planned to put his third company, Healtheon, at the center of the health care industry. Didn't happen. But if investors ever believed it would, it's because Healtheon CEO Mike Long sold them during talks across the globe. In the book The New New Thing, author Michael Lewis called it Long's "road show." If anything will doom Google Health, it's that Schmidt lacks Long's flare for salesmanship. Here's a clip from his stop at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference in Orlando.
Eric Schmidt impersonates Mike Long at healthcare conference
Google's onto its new thing, Google Health, and CEO Eric Schmidt is off on the road to promote the product. Stiffly. Too bad he's above taking lessons from the recent past. Back in the 1990s, Silicon Graphics and Netscape founder Jim Clark planned to put his third company, Healtheon, at the center of the health care industry. Didn't happen. But if investors ever believed it would, it's because Healtheon CEO Mike Long sold them during talks across the globe. In the book The New New Thing, author Michael Lewis called it Long's "road show." If anything will doom Google Health, it's that Schmidt lacks Long's flare for salesmanship. Here's a clip from his stop at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference in Orlando.
bad ideas
Microsoft makes Vista cheaper -- as if that's why people weren't buying
Microsoft has cut the price of the U.S. consumer versions of Windows Vista. The Ultimate Edition fell from $399 to $319 and the Home Premium Edition went from $159 to $129. The Register nails it: "It's hard to believe that millions of Windows XP users were just waiting for Vista to get a little cheaper before committing themselves." Why don't they just put XP back on the shelves? That seems easier. (Photo by mkeefe)
bad ideas
We heard through the grapevine that copies of this month's Wired were being taken off newsstands without payment — because unsuspecting readers thought the giant "Free!" on the cover meant the magazine was available no charge. Wired editor-in-chief Greg Anderson tells Valleywag:
"Free!" issue of Wired not actually free
We heard through the grapevine that copies of this month's Wired were being taken off newsstands without payment — because unsuspecting readers thought the giant "Free!" on the cover meant the magazine was available no charge. Wired editor-in-chief Greg Anderson tells Valleywag:The mag was indeed free (but not at newsstands). There have been some scattered reports of people walking out with them without paying. After the alarms went off, we hope they were advised about the web offer ;-)
bad ideas
We were kidding about the Julia Allison cover, Wired
We weren't actually serious about Julia Allison following up her Time Out New York cover with an appearance on the front of Wired. And yet, here's a photo from Julia Allison and Meghan Asha's brunch meeting with an unnamed Wired "marketing manager." Our hope is expired.
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