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Chris Hughes

politics

Obama's old-media campaign

The great myth of every presidential campaign since 1996: This is the year that the Internet changes everything. The Valley would like to take credit for Barack Obama's coronation as the Democratic contender — after all, didn't Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes leave the hot startup to run Obama's Web operation? Obama did milk his tricked-out website for much-needed publicity, it's true. But now that he's hit the big time, he's spending his money on television, not the Web. Obama, McCain, the parties, and other political actors are expected to spend a record $800 million on television ads between now and the November election. Why spend money online? Targeted advertising means that Obama's just preaching to the converted, who persist in the delusion that inbound hyperlinks tracked by Technorati are as good as votes. They're not, and Obama knows it — which is why he's using the Web to take money, not spend it. As ever, Washington sees Silicon Valley as good for only one thing: its pocketbook, not its ideas.

Chris Matyszczyk

CNET hires (m)adman to blog about Obama's victory

They'll let just about anyone blog these days, won't they? News.com's latest addition: recovering adman Chris Matyszczyk, who writes under the rubric "Technically Incorrect," and reminds me a bit of Dan Lyons's alter ego, Fake Steve Jobs — except that, having met Matyszczyk briefly, I think this is the real thing, not a put-on person. Matyszczyk's fantasy phone call between Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg is hilarious: Clinton blames Zuckerberg for her loss to Obama, and then hits the paper billionaire up for a donation. What's really funny: Matyszczyk is outsidery enough not to mention the fact that Zuckerberg's cofounder, Chris Hughes, left the social network early on to run Obama's Web campaign. Zuckerberg's posse really is at fault, and not in a metaphorical Facebook-generation way.

politics

The success of the startup Obama, the 100-word version

Barack Obama's campaign for president has raised a staggering $200 million from contributors through the Web, tapping Valley talent like Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and Mark Gorenberg, a VC with Hummer Winblad. Obama has surpassed fundraising efforts by his primary opponent Hillary Clinton, even though she's raised more money for her campaign than her husband, former President Bill Clinton, ever did in winning an election. And he's doing it under the rules put in place by the Republican candidate, John McCain, under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. You can read all the details in The Atlantic's 5,243-word feature by Joshua Green, but a summary, 98-word paragraph is all you need to read. More »

exits

Facebook CTO leaves a company that's graduating from high school

The Facebook Prom was prophetic, signaling farewells, graduation, and the ending of teenage ties. As his colleagues were preparing to dance the night away at the Metreon, CTO Adam D'Angelo, a high school buddy of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, was saying his farewells. BoomTown reports that D'Angelo, 23, is leaving the company because "his responsibilities no longer fit well with his skills and interests." Even as the company tries to recreate a high-school environment to keep its employees tightly knit, Zuckerberg's own social network is fraying. More »

where are they now?

Where are Facebook's missing cofounders? We found them on LinkedIn

We know what Facebook cofounders Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes are up to. Zuck lets COO Sheryl Sandberg run most of the company now while he plays industry visionary; Moskovitz is hiding from Valleywag's fearsome scrutiny; and Hughes is busy spamming your inbox with updates from Obama campaign director David Plouffe — sorry, revolutionizing politics on the Web. But where have unacknowledged cofounders Andrew McCollum and Eduardo Saverin gone? Their Facebook profiles aren't open to the public, but rival social network LinkedIn isn't nearly so skittish. Here are their profiles, with our notes: More »

politics

Clinton's campaign accused of hacking Obama blogs

In the clip embedded below, an Obama supporter demonstrates how "someone hacked into Barack Obama's site" and changed a link into Obama's Community Blogs so that it instead directs users to Hillary Clinton's home page. We're shocked. Obama's Web presence is the product of Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes. Anyone familiar with that platform knows it's entirely resilient to human error or internal corruption. The video demonstrating the hack: More »

aaron greenspan

Harvard classmate claims Zuckerberg stole Facebook's name

Facebook lawyers want to bar Aaron Greenspan, a Harvard chum of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, from marketing his new book, Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era. Their rationale: It uses the company's trademarked name improperly in the title. But their real goal is surely quashing Greenspan's story. In this excerpt from Greenspan's tell-all, the author argues that Zuckerberg stole the name Facebook from Greenspan's creation, HouseSystem. More »