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Valleywag
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separated at net worth
digital music
Following bloggers, musicians are the latest group to whore themselves to Apple
Bloggers know that a good Apple story is a sure-fire way to precious pageviews and ultimately, cash. Music groups are figuring out how to capitalize on the cult of Steve Jobs, too. Silicon Alley Insider reports that since appearing in an Apple ad on April 27, "Shut Up and Let Me Go" by The Ting Tings shot up to No. 11 on the iTunes charts and No. 93 on Billboard's top 100. Additionally, Apple fanboys snatched up copies of "Music Is My Hot Hot Sex" after Apple debuted the song in an ad on October 28, and then "New Soul" by Yael Naim took its turn on the charts after Apple featured it in its MacBook Air ad campaign. So the capitalist-friendly among us can't help but cheer
online advertising
Much-hyped new ad product means YouTube has to actually make money
YouTube announced a new ad product called Buzz Targeting. It uses an algorithm to allow advertisers to target "about-to-go-viral videos," and it's the ad product Google CEO Eric Schmidt gushed about during an interview with CNBC last month when he said: "We believe the best [YouTube] products are coming out this year. And they're new products — much more participative, much more creative, much more interesting in and of themselves." One problem: More »
venture capital
Hyped widgetmaker explains the widgetmaker hype
Union Square Ventures funded Mark Pincus's casual games maker Zynga with $10 million not long after Max Levchin-founded widgetmaker Slide raised $50 million. Competitor RockYou wants a round of funding that would value it at $400 million. We like to scoff at these purveyors of online sheep-throwing tools, but that's serious scratch, people. In this excerpt from a longer interview with Kara Swisher, Zynga's Mark Pincus explains what widgetmakers see in our future — and shows us exactly what kind of pitch VCs are going for these days.
death of print
Julia Allison, Star plumb depths of online-video medium
Star magazine's new Web show lets the whole Internet read gossip together! It's like commenting on a regular online video, but you have to find the host, Star editor-at-large Julia Allison, on the streets of Manhattan to have your say on last week's stale celeb snapshots. Imagine what will happen when Allison takes her talent for crashing to the next logical level and turns up in the middle of Lindsay Campbell's New York based woman-on-the-street interview show, MobLogic.tv.
exits
What will San Francisco do without some guy named Julian Brass?
Maybe you don't know who Engage.com's Julian Brass is? Odd. Because the 43 people tagged in the farewell-to-San Francisco video Brass uploaded to Facebook do. One of them forwarded it to us with this note: "This is the most painful shit I've ever seen in my life from Engage.com's Julian Brass." Really, how would we not share it with you after such a cold tribute from a so-called friend? Our favorite part is when Brass points the camera at his Francisco Street home, where he lived for all of a year and a half, and says, "I always just said: It's the pink one guys; it's the pink one. Ha ha." After viewing our excerpt, go check out Brass's full seven-minute video, slideshows and all. We're out of words to describe it, having previously banned them all.
politics
Former HP CEO on offshoring profits
American corporations that keep profits earned overseas can indefinitely keep that money out of the country in order to avoid paying American taxes. Former HP CEO and current John McCain campaign spokesperson Carly Fiorina says that gives companies an incentive to develop factories and jobs in markets abroad. Rather than close the loophole, Fiorina says it's better to lower the taxes. But then I have to ask, how will we pay for those wars overseas? I mean, besides slashing the social safety net and borrowing more money from China? The clip above is part of a longer interview with This Week with George Stephanopolous that ran yesterday morning. Her comments on McCain's environmental policy mirrored those made by the candidate at a whistle-stop in Oregon today.
breakdowns
Yahoo's real leadership problem: David Filo
Everyone's piling on Jerry Yang, saying Yahoo's founder-CEO needs to go. Why? The weak stock that provoked Microsoft's unsolicited bid may have been the result of his absentee ownership over the years. But Yahoo's deeper problem is the rot in its technical prowess. And that has everything to do with the quieter cofounder, David Filo. Filo has stayed behind the scenes, but wields considerable power over Yahoo's infrastructure. Requests for more hardware go through him, for example. When Yahoo executive Jeff Weiner joked in an internal all-hands movie about not going through IT because it was "too much paperwork," the audience surely laughed because they knew exactly what he meant. More »
5:00 PM on Wed May 7 2008
By Owen Thomas
6,564 views,
33 comments
Latest by X-Y: @BaldDog Bingo. The absolute correct source of "leadership problems" in Engineering, at Filo's expense apparently. more »
geek love
Slide CEO Max Levchin soon to wed Nellie Minkova
Hidden in Fortune editor Andy Serwer's stream-of-capitalism blog was this nugget: Slide CEO Max Levchin will soon wed longtime girlfriend Nellie Minkova. Minkova, pictured here with Levchin, works at Clarium Capital Management, the hedge fund of Peter Thiel, Levchin's cofounder at PayPal. For more of Minkova, see this excerpt from a New York Times video where she discussed domestic life with a boyfriend who works 18 hours a day: More »
great moments in hr
Decker: Yahoos upset over Microsoft are just tired and old
The people who really matter — Yahoo shareholders — are angry about the way Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang handled negotiations with Microsoft. But there are angry Yahoo employees, too. Problem is, top Yahoo management doesn't seem to want to hear from either group. Watch this excerpt from Tech Tickeras Yahoo president Sue Decker dismisses Yahoo dissenters as people who are "tired and feeling late stages in their career."
clips
Decker: We only told shareholders about Microsoft's $31 offer
Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock told reporters that shareholders supported Jerry Yang's decision to refuse Microsoft's bid for the company, even when it reached $33 per share. But yesterday, major shareholders Bill Miller and Gordon Crawford — who combined control about 13 percent of the company — said they did not agree with the way Yang handled negotiations. In this excerpt from Yahoo's own Tech Ticker, Sarah Lacy asks Yahoo president Sue Decker, "Who are these institutional shareholders who are supporting $37, $38 per share? Can you shed any light on that?" Watch as Decker explains that what Bostock really meant is that Yahoo's board supports Yahoo's board, which only really ever told shareholders about Microsoft's $31 per share offer. "And that's the end of the story."
internet famous
Videoblogger Amanda Congdon, who was once famous on the Internet for being famous on the Internet, has returned from a noncareer at ABC and an as-yet invisible development deal with HBO to introduce Sometimesdaily.com, a series of Web videos about, as far as we can tell, making Web videos. At least Rocketboom, on which Congdon's bosom won her many fans, was about something, though we can't quite remember what. More »
Amanda Congdon returns to Web video with video on Web about Web video
Videoblogger Amanda Congdon, who was once famous on the Internet for being famous on the Internet, has returned from a noncareer at ABC and an as-yet invisible development deal with HBO to introduce Sometimesdaily.com, a series of Web videos about, as far as we can tell, making Web videos. At least Rocketboom, on which Congdon's bosom won her many fans, was about something, though we can't quite remember what. More »
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.
