When Business 2.0, published by Time Inc., another arm of Time Warner, was on the rocks, its editor talked up a deal to save the magazine by merging it with TechCrunch. Those talks went nowhere. All of which makes us feel bad for TechCrunch coeditor Erick Schonfeld, who previously worked at Business 2.0; wasn't the whole idea of joining TechCrunch to escape Time Warner?

When I worked for Quittner at Business 2.0, he talked constantly about his long-held dream of going to a startup or launching a blog. That he's now choosing to stay at magazine publisher Time Inc. is useful as an economic indicator. Quittner boosted the Valley's comeback, and the business of blogging, long before other mainstream journalists. That he's turned bearish on both now could be a sign of personal cowardice. Or keen prescience.

April 16, 2008

To: TIME Staff
From: Rick Stengel

I'm delighted to announce that Josh Quittner is coming back to TIME to cover consumer technology with a regular column in the magazine and a daily blog on TIME.com. In his new role as editor-at-large, Josh will apply his singular voice to technology, writing both reviews of new products and features that explain what's most important to consumers in Techland.

Most recently, Josh was the managing editor of Business 2.0 and a writer for FORTUNE. He first had a byline in TIME in 1994 as a staff writer covering technology, back at the very beginning of the internet. He went on to launch "The Netly News," first as a website on Pathfinder and later as a column in the magazine. He subsequently served as editor of TIME.com—twice—as well as tech editor of TIME before moving to San Francisco in 2002 to work for Business 2.0. Prior to coming to Time Inc., Josh worked at Newsday in the early 90s, where he wrote a pioneering column called "Life in Cyberspace."

Josh will continue to work from San Francisco where he lives with his wife, journalist Michelle Slatalla (with whom he has co-written five books) and their three daughters, but I expect he'll be in the New York offices regularly. Josh is a great mind and a great brand to have back at TIME. We're fortunate to have him.

R.S.

The domain name now points to a blog that's been active since March 10. The writers are "Slatalla" — almost certainly Michelle Slatalla, Quittner's wife — and "Roofie" — presumably Quittner. The prose matches his voice, and the subject fits, since Quittner took an active interest in real estate while at Business 2.0. But real estate is a bread-and-butter subject for Time Inc.'s finance magazines. Josh, rather than starting your own blog, why don't you just apply for a job at Money, run by your former deputy Eric Schurenberg? That seems easier.

Valleywag's Mary Jane Irwin — who worked for me at Business 2.0 — snapped this shot of a waiting passenger devouring Business 2.0's final issue in the Portland, Maine, airport. Another reminder that Time Inc.'s incompetent reorganization of its salesforce, not a lack of demand from readers, killed the title.

At best, it's careless; at worst, a deliberate slap. Add it to the list of ways Quittner, a difficult, mischievous, but endlessly creative personality who arguably saved the magazine (and, with it, my career) from a much-earlier death, has been treated disgracefully by his employer. The only mystery: Why is he sticking around, save for the New-York-media-level salary?

Arrington is being far too generous in that murder scenario, I believe. He gives the executives at Time Inc. more credit for strategic thinking than they deserve. With the damage done, however, they faced a pragmatic choice of spending money to revive Business 2.0's ad sales, or reinvesting in Fortune, which now faces serious competition from Conde Nast's Portfolio. Can you blame them for making what was, to them, the safer bet?

New York-based media has never understood the Valley well, parachuting reporters in during the boom times, and abandoning it during the inevitable bust. (How long do you think Fortune's newly expanded San Francisco bureau, swollen with Business 2.0 refugees, will last during the next downturn?) That Time Inc. didn't know what to make of Business 2.0 isn't surprising. It's typical.

Former B2 editor Josh Quittner, left, will get the title of executive editor, and Squires gives props to his tech chops in the memo. But Squires doesn't mention that as such, Quittner will be effectively outranked by his predecessor, Jim Aley, right, who departed B2 abruptly in 2002 to rejoin Fortune after Quittner arrived to take over the magazine. From what we hear, Aley, an assistant managing editor and the director of Fortune's technology coverage, will be the de facto boss of the tech-focused bureau, not Quittner. (Full disclosure: Before joining Valleywag, I worked for both Aley and Quittner at Business 2.0.)

The bidders, sources say, include CNET, the online tech publisher, and Mansueto Ventures, the publisher of Inc. and Fast Company. CNET's interest likely extends to the brand and the articles archive, while Mansueto might be more interested in Business 2.0's 600,000-strong mailing list of subscribers, which could bolster Fast Company's print circulation. But a sale of those assets while it might generate some cash for Time Inc., would also strengthen the buyers as print and online rivals to the magazine publishers, making those companies' bids unlikely to result in a deal.

As they say in the land of Mariane, touché, and as they say in our neck of the woods, douché. Another thing you can count on: If Business 2.0 ceases publication — one of the options parent company Time Inc. has acknowledges it's "exploring" for the title — les blogueurs will now surely take credit for their supposed victory.

Business 2.0, up until late yesterday, was unquestionably in the process of shutting down. Columnists had been told not to bother turning anything in for October. Staffers — both those whom Time Inc. hoped to retain, and those not on the favored lists — had been seeking other employment. And a squad of higher-ups at Time Inc. had set travel plans to fly out to California to finish shutting the magazine down.

And now, most of those travel plans have been cancelled. Employees have been asked to stay to work on the October issue, and freelancers have been assigned pieces. And, I can only imagine as the fellow who used to write these things, hurried revisions are being made to a valedictory editor's letter. It's good news of the exceedingly inconvenient kind.

As of last night, Time Inc. execs have decided to enter into some form of due diligence with prospective buyers, and keep the magazine alive while it considers the dozen or so offers it's received. (Want to buy a magazine? It's not too late to throw your hat in the ring: send email to Maurice Edelson, the VP who's running the sale process.)

The question, though, is why? Did social media save the magazine? Perhaps so, in a roundabout way. The Facebook group "I Read Business 2.0 — and Want to Keep Reading!" numbers more than 2,000 people, but that's hardly enough for Time Inc. honchos, who deal with magazine circulations numbering in the millions, to pay notice. But Facebook, with its early-adopter audience, may have proved an ideal way to get the attention of serious prospective buyers.

Everything's up in the air, of course. Time Inc.'s top brass could decide to refuse the offers. They could proceed with plans to fold some of the staff into Fortune. They could even — though this seems unlikely — decide that the buyers have a good idea in wanting to own the magazine, and reconsider holding onto it.

This much is clear, however. Business 2.0 has gone, overnight, from certain death to an uncertain life. It's the kind of back-from-the-brink business-revival story that I used to read all the time. In the pages, naturally, of Business 2.0.

The magazine is definitely shutting. Unconfirmed. The official line: Nothing's decided yet. Insiders, however, are behaving as if it's true. Freelancers have been told not to bother pitching stories for October and staffers are actively looking for other jobs. On the other hand, editor Josh Quittner is actively watching the "Save Business 2.0" Facebook group, which now has more than 1,500 members, including some high up in the Time-Life Building.

Even the September issue's not coming out. False. The paper's already bought, the printing plant's already booked, and subscribers are owed issues. Time Inc. wouldn't save any money by not printing it.

The vultures are descending. True. We hear Wired, Business 2.0's crosstown rival, has been trying to recruit from the magazine's ranks, as have other publications trying to staff up to cover the tech boom. Fortune, meanwhile, is hoping to retain some B2ers in the event of a closure to bolster its tech-reporting ranks. There's not, however, a definite list of B2 staffers Time Inc. intends to retain.

The office will be vacated August 3. False. Time Inc. has leased Business 2.0's offices at One California Street through 2010. Not clear, however, who will be occupying those offices. Some think it might make sense to put Time Inc. salespeople into the plusher digs at One California and move the journalists to Time Inc.'s drab cubicles in the nearby Embarcadero Center building.

Offers are coming in to buy the magazine. True. Since the Times published its article last week about B2's impending doom, more than a dozen potential buyers have expressed interest, some of them the predictable bargain-hunters but some respectable sorts. But Time Inc. management is in a no-win situation. If they sell Business 2.0 for a song, and someone else succeeds with the magazine, then they risk looking doubly stupid: First, for spending $68 million on the magazine back in 2001. And second, for not being able to turn a profit with it. For that reason alone, Time Inc.'s more likely to close B2 than sell it.

Business 2 editors (at least one) have told writers they are not assigning any stories for the October issue because the mag's last issue will be September.

Josh Quittner's alt.bio

• Early 1994: Pens classic early Wired tale, The War Between alt.tasteless and rec.pets.cats.

  It takes a particular kind of genius ... to shock people who have devoted a lifetime to collecting revolting facts, disgusting jokes, and synonyms for the word "penis."

• Late 1994: Registers mcdonalds.com after the company repeatedly ignores his warnings.

  
  $whois mcdonalds.com
  Domain Name: MCDONALDS.COM
  Administrative Contact: Quittner, Josh quit@newsday.com

• May 1995: Overblown Tom Wolfe 2.0 essay, The Birth of Way New Journalism, nonetheless shows that Quittner understood a dozen years ago how Web journalism would eventually differ from its print and broadcast predecessors.
• Oct 1995: During the launch of TIME's official online experiment, The Netly News, Quittner gets into a food fight with Wired's unofficial online experiment, Suck.

  

  So we yanked out Noah's QuickCam, took a picture of the three of us giving a one-finger salute to the Duke, and uploaded it to the URL to which Suck pointed. Now, when anyone clicked on a Netly link, they'd be greeted with the rude image of us and the exhortation, "Dear Duke: Suck on this!"

• 1996-2001: TIME stuff no one remembers now.
• January 2002: Not only does Quittner get an exclusive cover story on the new flat-panel iMacs for TIME, not only does he get Jobs to reschedule the launch event to fit TIME's onstand schedule, but thanks to an inattentive Canadian sysadmin Quittner actually breaks the story before Jobs takes the stage! This, people, is the stuff j-schoolers dream about pulling off.

  

• October 2006: Issues Business 2.0 requirement that all reporters must blog. The move is mind-numbingly dull to bloggers and Web surfers, but to print reporters he's as crazy as that guy who translated the Bible into English. It's just not done!

Software makers have standard terms for stuff that isn't ready to sell to customers yet. Distilling the extensive Wikipedia entry to two lines:

• alpha — the first protean, buggy, incomplete version of a program worth test-driving. It has nothing to do with "alpha geek," a self-deprecating pun on alpha male.
• beta — an almost-ready version, shared with customers willing to report the bugs.

Alpha and beta are just Greek for a and b. They were, anyway, until 1994, when Netscape accidentally turned "beta" into a World Wide Web buzzword by giving away over a dozen beta versions of its browsers in three years. For Web hipsters, using Netscape's buggy beta features shifted from an option to a requirement. If you don't remember pounding your keyboard over Finnish sites that locked you out with "go install Netscape 2.0b3," you weren't really there.

Today, beta gets thrown around as a metaphor for "newer" rather than "not ready," applied to amorphous Web content and services rather than precisely numbered computer programs. It's confusing: Is Business 2.0 Beta really next month's print magazine, blogged for factchecking and typos by willing test readers? That'd be even ballsier than the issue they outsourced to India.

If you're not talking software, leave alpha and beta to the twinks who put "2.0" after any slightly changed version of anything. Instead, SVUG recommends these advanced metaphors:

• How's that business plan coming? "I can send you a pre-alpha if you promise not to laugh."
• Is your blog redesign live yet? "I think I've got a release candidate, wanna see?"
• Dude, you're writing for Valleywag 2.0! "Nah, it's more like Valleywag 1.1."

• Man, this is not the New York Times's best weekend. Their latest gaffe: calling Peter Hirshberg, chairman of blog search company Technorati, the CEO. Poor tech blogger Om Malik was afraid CEO Dave Sifry had been ousted. But Sifry replied on Om's blog that he's still in charge. He tells me the mix-up was probably an innocent mistake by the Times; no one interviewed Sifry for the article. [GigaOM]
• The campaign blog to free imprisoned medical marijuana dispenser Sparky Rose says that his prosecutors claim he had "no previous work history prior to the pot club." Rose was a high-rolling dot-com founder — same thing? [Free Sparky]
• CNET launches a new title called Crave, because the world needs yet another gadget blog. [Crave]
• Who wins the battle of YouTube vs. MySpace, now that the latter is aggressively moving into online video and breaking YouTube vids embedded on MySpace? Google wins, of course. [BusinessWeek]
• NY Times columnist Joe Nocera says Carly Fiorina's memoir of her time heading Hewlett-Packard is a revisionist history — she lies about earnings, he says, and her book should be called "It's All About Me." [NY Times Select]
• Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner will pay all his journalists to run their own blogs — presumably so no one else leaves like B2 writer Om Malik to start their own media empire. [I Want Media]

Disruptor 1: Netvibes (Custom web portal)
Hero (pictured here not knowing he'll be Photoshopped to look silly): Founder Tariq Krim
B2 says: "Netvibes currently doesn't accept typical Web ads — the kind Krim denounces as 'Advertising 1.0, in your face.'" Instead he gets "sponsors."
B2 means: "Netvibes took $15 million in funding. It doesn't have income, just pointless deals that get media attention until a conglomerate buys the company."
Netvibes competitors B2 doesn't mention: Goowy, mobileGlu, Pageflakes, Protopage, Start, and over 30 others

Disruptor 2: Salesforce.com (Customer resource management/application platform provider)
Hero: CEO Marc Benioff
B2 says: "It's true that Benioff is known throughout the tech business for his bombast, and he's always predicting that Salesforce is about to do something amazing. But he's not all talk."
B2 means: "Benioff is about to launch a product update that will bring his company up to speed with competitors Microsoft and Oracle. Yawn."
Favorite Benioff quote: "We will destroy Oracle and SAP because they won't be able to respond to the innovation we are about to unleash."

Disruptor 3: Clearwire (Wi-Max broadband wireless provider)
Hero: Founder Craig McCaw
Actually, this guy's story checks out as far as I know — real business plan, real success. Feel free to correct me in the comments.

Disruptor 4: Zopa (Person-to-person loans)
Hero: The business model
B2 says: "Zopa is closing that gap by using the Web to allow personal lending on a massive scale. The startup was the first company to introduce peer-to-peer lending in the United Kingdom 18 months ago and is about to launch in America."
B2 means: "In America, Zopa will compete with Prosper, a personal lending site that already has a head start and funding from the same venture capital firm."
Proper term for Bessemer Venture Partners, investor in Zopa and Prosper: Player

The Disruptors [Business 2.0]

"How to Ride the Fifth Wave," Business 2.0, July 2005:

Roughly speaking, the history of computing has unrolled in four major waves....Now comes computing's fifth wave....The fifth wave puts computing everywhere.

"The New Barbarians," Forbes, September 2006:

The history of high tech is marked by three big waves....Now comes the fourth wave, as computing costs ratchet down yet again.

After the jump, we give the extended version, which shows just how closely Forbes ripped off (or coincidentally and uncannily resembled, at least) Business 2.0.

Business 2.0, July 2005:

Roughly speaking, the history of computing has unrolled in four major waves. The first came in the 1960s, as mainframe computers advanced into the corporate world and became essential business tools. The 1970s saw the wide adoption of the minicomputer. Then came the personal computer in the '80s, followed in the '90s by networking and the Internet, and the spread of distributed computing. Each successive wave of technology brought with it giant leaps in productivity and huge increases in spending. Each transition lifted some companies (think IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google) and swamped those that couldn't adapt (think Wang and Digital Equipment).

Now comes computing's fifth wave. It's different from the sea changes that came before it. For the first time, the shift isn't driven primarily by a single piece of hardware or by how corporations deploy it. Instead, it results from the unprecedented coalescence of three powerful technological forces: cheap and ubiquitous computing devices, from PCs to cell phones to tiny but potent systems that are beginning to show up in everything from bedroom lamps to key chains; low-cost and omnipresent bandwidth; and open standards—not just Linux source code but the opening of other software as well as corporate databases. The fifth wave puts computing everywhere. It offers access to limitless amounts of information, services, and entertainment. All the time. Everywhere.

Forbes's "The New Barbarians...":

Yet the advantages of the Cheap Revolution are so compelling that nothing is likely to thwart this shift—and this time customers themselves are leading the pack. The history of high tech is marked by three big waves. First came mainframes, which ruled in the 1950s and 1960s. They began to give way in the 1970s to the second wave: less costly midrange minicomputers. By the late 1980s minicomputers were being pushed out by the third wave: networks of pcs and Unix-based servers. Each iteration wiped out past leaders and created new giants. Amdahl all but vanished when mainframes collapsed; midrange makers Digital Equipment Corp. and Data General rose to take its place. Then Digital and Data General were wiped out by the likes of Compaq, Dell and Microsoft in pcs and Sun Microsystems in Unix servers.

Now comes the fourth wave, as computing costs ratchet down yet again. Sun Micro and other purveyors of proprietary designs were immune to the threat for years because off-the-shelf chips from Intel and amd weren't yet strong enough to compete head-on. But today's PC microprocessors, lashed together by the dozens, cheaply outgun the specialized chip engines that powered Sun, SGI and others. Linux, the MySQL database and other low-cost open-source software, first created by amateurs, have evolved at Internet speed and are now polished enough to rival products from Microsoft and Oracle. Systems assembled with these elements cost 90% less than last-generation systems, yet can run faster and are more reliable.

How to Ride the Fifth Wave [Business 2.0]
The New Barbarians [Forbes]

We think this more accurately represents Business 2.0's attitude. I mean, holy shit, $60,000 a month! That's as much as a respectable small business! Who can fathom this kind of wealth besides every damn millionaire in the Valley?

Mega-size version [Valleywag]
Earlier: A word about the photo in Business 2.0's Michael Arrington profile [Valleywag]
And: A picture of Michael Arrington lighting his cigar with a hundred-dollar bill [Valleywag]

Satire is dead in Silicon Valley.

Earlier: A word about the photo in Business 2.0's Michael Arrington profile [Valleywag]

The TechCrunch founder is in the perfect middle-management power suit, yes.

He's smoking a big ol' stogie, yes.

And there's money floating around him. Very 80s. Classy. Feels like BusinessWeek.

So why is he not lighting his cigar with a flaming Ben Franklin?

Blogging for big bucks [Business 2.0]

Behold this party animal, shot in the wild by Laughing Squid's Scott Beale:

Wooooo! That's one ca-raaaazy guy! I hear, later that night, he took his jacket off!

Really, we have nothing but respect for Arrington's ability to hold a schmoozefest, but let's not pretend this or previous Arrington parties were anything more than pale guys pretending to like each other and hitting on the five cute girls in attendance.

There's nothing wrong with that kind of party, even if it was so boring that we couldn't bear to run our usual photologue. But it's wrong of Business 2.0 to lure fun-seekers to spots like August Capital, when they'd be much happier throwing down (twice) with a blogger like Om Malik in San Fran.

Blogging for Dollars [Business 2.0]

GigaOM blogger Om Malik is taking his tech site from hobby to business. His alma mater, Business 2.0, held a patio party for him at the Hotel Vitale. Guests included B2 editor Josh Quittner, Craigslist creator Craig Newmark, and a whole gang of delightful snarkers. These photos are from Scott Beale (aka "Long Tentacle") from Laughing Squid.

Om kisses the ring of Michael Arrington, the Tech Blogging king who reigns from the throne of TechCrunch. Every time that happens in a movie, doesn't the kisser end up overthrowing the kissed?

In the corner, Craig Newmark has His Conversation: net neutrality, a eulogy to The West Wing, tales of dropping in on realtors, and which birds are nesting in his Cole Valley backyard. (It's his only conversation, but it's a good one.)

"My writers work for commission. Every time we get an angry e-mail from Vonage, they get a hundred dollars."

The quality of a party is directly proportional to the amount of guys wearing shirts like the guy on the left.

Party conversation in the Valley goes much better if you throw your hair over your eyes and pretend you're talking to a girl.

I don't like to post photos of myself, but look at Mike's glare! Too precious!

During the party, Mike told me that I'm welcome to come to his upcoming party (the social event of the season!), but that security was instructed to break my arms.

It's not a Scott Beale party photo set without someone gesturing obscenely at the camera.

Wouldn't you eat a can of Om Malik dog food? To read the cover, view this in full size.

Photos: Business 2.0 celebrates Om Malik [Laughing Squid]

Behavioral marketing seeks to deploy mechanisms like Web video and interactivity to reach an increasingly fragmented audience with messages that are at once entertaining enough to penetrate young consumers' ad immunity but not so in-your-face that those consumers instantly recoil.

MySpace's innovative marketing strategy, in action on MySpace.com:

How Fox Interactive got so sly [Business 2.0]

New York Times, yesterday:

Business 2.0, last year:

Way to keep up with the times, Times.

As Online Ads Grow, Eyeballs Are Valuable Again on the Web [NYT]
Bubble-era buyouts are back [Business 2.0]
Earlier: Bubble Watch: We're back to selling body parts [Valleywag]

Take, for instance, their newest attention-getting list, 50 People Who Matter. It's a perfect guide to:

How to make an A-list

• Build the core of the list with solid perennial picks whom everyone recognizes. BusinessWeek chose superstar leaders like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and Oprah Winfrey. For, say, a "Greatest American" list, pick Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, and Oprah Winfrey.
• Pick some up-and-comers that already earned inordinate press attention. Here, B2.0 chose the Flickr co-founders, a hotshot developer from 37signals, Digg founder Kevin Rose, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

More rules of king-making, after the jump.

• Prop up the list with respectable but lesser-known stalwarts for the most loyal readers. This is where B2.0 brings in the bankers, CEOs of unsexy companies, and small-time media moguls.
• Supplement with three or four side articles. In this case, 10 people who don't matter, the "Do you know who matters" quiz, and How we chose the 50. In fact, always run a "who's not cool," a quiz, and a methodology piece. Then jot down an intro and you're golden.

50 People Who Matter [Business 2.0]