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Ben Ling boomerangs from Facebook to Google
Where's Ben Ling headed next? We hear he might be headed back to Google — not a startup. Ling, a talented product manager, is closely watched as a talent barometer. His defection from Google to Facebook last year kicked off a series of trend stories about people leaving Google. Less than a year on the job, he's leaving Facebook, which has kicked off another series of trend stories about people leaving Facebook. Ling was recently spotted having lunch in Mountain View. You know what this means: A series of trend stories about ex-Googlers returning to the Googleplex. Update: Kara Swisher confirms Ling is returning to Google, tasked with figuring out how to make money off YouTube.
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Monitor110 investor snippily confirms Draper Fisher Jurvetson's backstabbing
Roger Ehrenberg wrote a popular post-mortem on Monitor110, a news aggregator for investors he'd backed. It burned through $20 million in funding before finally dying this summer. We'd learned that Ehrenberg had omitted a key detail from his history of the company — that it had sought a bridge loan from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a VC which had invested in the company, gotten a promise of the money, spent it, and then seen DFJ renege on the loan and fund a competitor Skygrid instead. We contacted Ehrenberg for comment before running the story, and he passed up an opportunity to deny any of the facts. We ran the story. Now Ehrenberg writes: "Few things irk me more than shoddy journalism, lousy research and bad intentions, and these three neatly came together in a piece by Nicholas Carlson published today in Valleywag." He then proceeded to confirm everything we reported. "Here are the real facts," he writes: More »
DailyCandy sold to Comcast for $125 million
In selling DailyCandy to Comcast for $125 million, Bob Pittman has notched a 36x return on the email newsletter he bought in 2003 for $3.5 million. We had heard that Comcast was trying to get it for $75 million, marking sharp dealmanship by Pittman to get the higher price. The long-rumored deal has done much to restore Pittman's reputation as a businessman after the disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger. [Silicon Alley Insider}
In selling DailyCandy to Comcast for $125 million, Bob Pittman has notched a 36x return on the email newsletter he bought in 2003 for $3.5 million. We had heard that Comcast was trying to get it for $75 million, marking sharp dealmanship by Pittman to get the higher price. The long-rumored deal has done much to restore Pittman's reputation as a businessman after the disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger. [Silicon Alley Insider}
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Rocketboom, which still exists, signs distribution deal with Sony
Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron, who didn't invent the Internet, video, or Internet video, but did prove back in 2006 that its possible to become Internet famous with quick, quirky edits and a pretty girl's face, has announced a "seven-figure" distribution deal with Sony, TechCrunch reports, confirming a rumor we floated earlier this summer. Sony will distribute Baron's show over its PS3 videogame consoles, PlayStation Portables, and Bravia I-Link TVs.
digital music
Buckcherry apparently too drunk to spoof BitTorrent
The grindy reporters at the Wall Street Journal have confirmed what the guys at TorrentFreak figured out a couple of weeks ago: Hard rockers Buckcherry (I recommend listening to "Lit Up" and "Ridin'" as a primer) leaked their own single "Too Drunk ..." from a computer at their manager's office in early July. The band had issued a faux-outraged press release over the pretend act of piracy. Their complaint: "We want our FANS to have any new songs first.” Uh, guys, isn't that exactly what happened?
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Napkin shows New York ubergeek Jakob Lodwick encouraged IAC employee to two-time Barry Diller
Once an oversharer, always an oversharer — no matter what it costs, personally or financially. When IAC fired Jakob Lodwick — the Internet's own Howard Roark — from Web video site Vimeo, IAC agreed to pay Lodwick $100,000 a year until 2011, just so long as he stayed away from IAC employees in any new ventures. Lodwick, reportedly bipolar and never much one for consistency, has proven unable to resist the temptation. An image posted to former IAC employee Justin Ouellette's personal blog seems to confirm what's already been rumored: Lodwick funded Ouellette's side project, an online-music site called Muxtape, with enough cash — $95,000 in exchange for 1 percent of Muxtape's equity, going by the scribbled napkin — so that Oullette could quit IAC to run Muxtape full time. More »
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Report: Weiner leaves Yahoo, accepts VC offer
Scratch another name off ex-Yahoo Bradley Horowitz's list of Yahoo's doomed and departed. Yahoo exec Jeff Weiner, the man in charge of core products like Yahoo.com, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger has resigned from the company, a person familiar with the situation told the LA Times. He's accepted a new role as an entrepreneur-in-residence shared between venture capital firms Accel Partners and Greylock Partners. That means he'll get an office (or two), a big paycheck (or two) and a charge to think up big ideas — a great gig for a new dad. It's an unusual arrangement, but both firms are stuffed full of ex-Yahoos who probably see an angle in helping Weiner out. The LA Times's source says Yahoo will not immediately replace Weiner, but instead delegate his responsibilites to group of execs. Kind of the way you spread peanut butter over toast, you know?
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Hulu lands Viacom's Colbert and Stewart
Now showing on NBC Universal and News Corp. Web video joint venture Hulu: the Daily Show's Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report's Stephen Colbert from Comedy Central. Viacom, which owns the Comedy Central network, has long hinted it might join Hulu — we heard rumors the deal was done in March — but until now had only announced agreements with Joost, the failing Internet video company founded by Skype founders Nikolas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. More »
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Apple replaces .Mac with MobileMe
At Steve Jobs's WWDC Keynote, Gizmodo is reporting that Apple has replaced .Mac, its computer-centric set of Web services, with MobileMe, an online suite of email, photos, and file storage. It's designed to keep iPhones, PCs, and Macs in sync — hence the need for a new name. Other than that, little has changed: The service still costs $99 a year — some rumors had it going free — and Apple is still designing the Web software itself, without help from a partner like Google. (Google Maps is now built into Apple's address book, however.) (Photo by Gizmodo)
