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Posts Tagged “blogging for dollars”
Blogger nominates himself for CEO of Motorola's cell-phone spinoff
Engadget editor Ryan Block, noting that Motorola is struggling to find a leader for its cell-phone business, volunteers for the job. [Engadget]
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blogging for dollars
Duncan Riley quits TechCrunch
Today is Duncan Riley's last day of full-time writing for Michael Arrington's TechCrunch, we learned from Techmeme. Riley will move to his own publication, the Inquisitr. "My sincere hope is to have the opportunity to buy that blog some day and bring him right back into the fold," Arrington writes in his farewell.
mysteries
What does Mashable's Pete Cashmore do? Al Gore funds an investigation
I've long been fascinated with the ubiquitous gladhandery of Pete Cashmore, the 22-year-old founder of Mashable. And I've been meaning to ask Cashmore what, exactly, he does. Al Gore's cable channel, Current, has saved me the awkward moment. As a video clip shows, Cashmore talks on his cell phone, takes cabs, and meets with Internet luminaries. He claims that this process helps Mashable "get the news." For example? He interviewed Bebo founder Michael Birch days before the company's $850 million sale to AOL. Did his facetime land him the scoop? No. For that matter, Cashmore really hasn't written anything for Mashable in ages. Understandably. Appearing to be a blogger is a full-time job. The full clip: More »
party report
This is what I remember from last night's VentureBeat party: A social network for golfers announced a round of funding at the event. A social network for golfers? Is this what blogging has come to, I asked founder Matt Marshall. He gamely held his ground and ducked the question. As Kara Swisher documented in the clip above, VentureBeat's party at the Ambassador in San Francisco was a bubbly affair, packed wall to wall with free drinks for all comers — until the bar turned cash. That kept the event, paid for by sponsors, profitable, Marshall explained. I'm glad the blog bought me a drink. I needed it when I ran into Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster later that evening. He was perfectly civil, but it's disconcerting to talk to a man to whom one only comes up to clenched-fist level.
For VentureBeat, a profitable display of excess
This is what I remember from last night's VentureBeat party: A social network for golfers announced a round of funding at the event. A social network for golfers? Is this what blogging has come to, I asked founder Matt Marshall. He gamely held his ground and ducked the question. As Kara Swisher documented in the clip above, VentureBeat's party at the Ambassador in San Francisco was a bubbly affair, packed wall to wall with free drinks for all comers — until the bar turned cash. That kept the event, paid for by sponsors, profitable, Marshall explained. I'm glad the blog bought me a drink. I needed it when I ran into Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster later that evening. He was perfectly civil, but it's disconcerting to talk to a man to whom one only comes up to clenched-fist level.
six apart
Is Six Apart cofounder Mena Trott already getting bored with the tribulations of new motherhood? She took a break from raising future superblogger Penelope Trott, who surely coded Movable Type templates in the womb, to create a video imagining what she would have done had YouTube been around when she was 16. Having met Mena, née Grabowski, when she was an actual teenager, I can say this for her skills as a self-documentarian: two thumbs up for accuracy.
Mena Trott revisits her lost youth on YouTube
Is Six Apart cofounder Mena Trott already getting bored with the tribulations of new motherhood? She took a break from raising future superblogger Penelope Trott, who surely coded Movable Type templates in the womb, to create a video imagining what she would have done had YouTube been around when she was 16. Having met Mena, née Grabowski, when she was an actual teenager, I can say this for her skills as a self-documentarian: two thumbs up for accuracy.
Robert Scoble redesign draws Michael Arrington's ire
Robert Scoble, the man who makes boring videos about tech companies, but only the ones you don't care about, convinced Fast Company to redesign his blog, and it's now practically tasteful. But the giant ad from longtime sponsor Seagate prompted TechCrunch's Michael Arrington to throw Scoble's argument against ads on blogs back at him. [Scobleizer]
jackpot
John Battelle takes $22 million in fuck-you money
Anyone telling you that Federated Media, the online ad network which reps Boing Boing, GigaOm, TechCrunch and other blogs, has raised $50 million from investors is dead wrong. It's true, Oak Investment Partners and others paid $50 million for shares of Federated. But only half of that went to the company, we're told; the rest went to founder John Battelle and other employees. According to our source, Battelle's take was roughly 90 percent of the insider shares sold, or about $22 million. More »
1:00 PM on Wed Apr 30 2008
By Owen Thomas
3,012 views,
4 comments
Latest by moore850: Word on the street is, he'll lose most of that in one incredibly bad hand of poker at a suitcase gambling stand by Capitola beach. more »
blogging for dollars
Want to go through 9,000 photos of cats each day? Get in line
Seattle-based Pet Holdings, the company that runs the photo-blog I Can Has Cheezburger, posted a job listing on Monday. Company founder Ben Huh told the Syndey Morning Herald he has since received over 250 applications. Like the thought of a hungry cat watching me while I sleep, this terrifies me. Not only will Huh's new hire have to go through 7,000 captioned and 2,000 uncaptioned photos of felines each day, this person will be forced to check the grammar and spelling of that cruel and unusual punishment of the English language known as LOLspeak. No can has dignity!
automattic
AllThingsD's Kara Swisher admits her bias in interviewing Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg: Not only does her site use his blogging software, but she admits to having a "personal mancrush" on the programmer. He is perhaps the first straight guy to receive such treatment from Swisher, who is, provably, a mean lesbian. I think it's the hair: Mullenweg stole the retro-fauxhawk look from yours truly, I believe. Swisher does ask Mullenweg, "How do you make money at this?" But she's too crushed out to point out that Mullenweg already has made money, at least for himself, by selling a chunk of his company to investors. A digest of the interview: More »
Matt Mullenweg charms pants off Kara Swisher, copies my hairdo
AllThingsD's Kara Swisher admits her bias in interviewing Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg: Not only does her site use his blogging software, but she admits to having a "personal mancrush" on the programmer. He is perhaps the first straight guy to receive such treatment from Swisher, who is, provably, a mean lesbian. I think it's the hair: Mullenweg stole the retro-fauxhawk look from yours truly, I believe. Swisher does ask Mullenweg, "How do you make money at this?" But she's too crushed out to point out that Mullenweg already has made money, at least for himself, by selling a chunk of his company to investors. A digest of the interview: More »
blogging kills
MessageDance trying to cash in on "blogging kills" scare
While exploiting tragic deaths and blogger heatlh problems for a trend piece in the New York Times is bad, trying to gin up new customers by jumping on the bandwagon is yet worse, but that's just what MessageDance is doing with their latest email direct marketing campaign: "Power blogging minus the heart attack!" Especially since it seems to imply that making it easier to post updates anywhere and anytime will somehow relieve the pressure to constantly stay on top of the news.
anil dash
Six Apart executive fails to job-hop, follow other Silicon Valley rules
What's wrong with Anil Dash? As of today, the New York blogger, Six Apart's vice president of evangelism, has been at the San Francisco-based blog-software company for five years. Dash, the company's first employee, is one of its largest individual shareholders, but he's mostly vested by now. Why stick around? In Silicon Valley, the custom is to job-hop, to continuously optimize one's career for maximum gains. In staying loyal to Six Apart cofounders Ben and Mena Trott, Dash is betraying one of the industry's unspoken rules. No wonder so many of the ruthless careerists who populate tech companies find him grating. The concept that one might be vested in something other than stock options is alien to them.
online advertising
Six Apart consummates Apperceptive acquisition, fecund pair already preggers with yet another ad network
As a part of a new "blogging services" strategy, blog software firm Six Apart has acquired social media applications builder Apperceptive and launched a new ad network. SAI questions whether the world needs another ad network. It doesn't. But we also wonder about Six Apart's timing. Why not launch the ad network during Ad:tech a week earlier? The Moscone Center crowd might have liked to lay some bets on some SXSW-style kickball action organized by publicly snarky, privately earnest Six Apart marketing guru Anil Dash. All we got were booth babes in fishnets.
Most bloggers don't deserve any ad revenue, the seven-word version
Blogger Louis Gray spends another 1,185 words on the subject, but the headline says it all — and describes him, too. [Louisgray.com]
Blogger Louis Gray spends another 1,185 words on the subject, but the headline says it all — and describes him, too. [Louisgray.com]
blogging for dollars
Take a tour inside a blogger sweat shop
Perhaps you thought the New York Times made too much of stressful working conditions for bloggers in its infamous "Blog Till They Drop" article. But that's only because you haven't seen this video tour of a blogger sweatshop from activist group Barely Political. Watch it now people. My boss will surely cane me for posting, but it must be seen! More »
copyfight
The Pirate Bay's new blog platform inspired by WordPress.com censorship
BayWords is the new blog host from those lovable Swedish outlaws at The Pirate Bay. The blogging platform is built atop open-source WordPress code. Which is a little ironic, since TorrentFreak reports that the project was started after a WordPress.com user who linked to copyrighted material lost his account. As for the new site, almost anything goes. "As long as you don't break any Swedish laws in your blog, we will defend it," says The Pirate Bay's Peter "Brokep" Sunde. Looks I'll be spending the weekend reading up on Sweden's legal code.
blogging for dollars
Nick "The Slasher" Denton cuts loose three blogs: Gridskipper, Idolator, and Wonkette
Is Nick Denton going soft? Even his cutbacks are sentimental these days. In the old days, Denton, the publisher of Valleywag and 14 other Gawker Media blogs, would simply shutter blogs. These days, he worries first about finding them nice homes. Such is the velvet-glove treatment he's giving Gridskipper, Wonkette, and Idolator, his blogs about, respectively, travel, politics, and music. The three blogs amount to less than 3 percent of Gawker Media's traffic, he says. Fine, so why keep them around in any form? Silicon Alley Insider has the details on their new owners. More evidence of Denton's increasing namby-pambosity: Instead of threatening to fire leakers, he's encouraging us to post the internal memo announcing the move. Darling bossman, that's no fun. But also no reason to keep the memo from you, dear readers: More »
heather armstrong
Angry mom-blogger runs over haters
Lots of businesses get hate mail, but few owners react the way Dooce's Heather Armstrong does. She prints out nasty emails, puts them in her driveway and drives over them with her car. "That's the attitude I have," she says, "and it's made my life a thousand percent better."I stopped reading at "a thousand percent." (Photo by Heather B. Armstrong)
