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Next Establishment
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Evan Williams
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Cal Henderson sighting at 330 Ritch
Stubblicious Flickr developer Cal Henderson and his "fake wife," Pownce community liaison Ariel Waldman, were sharing a precious booth with their entourage at yet another overpacked Seesmic party. Here, Waldman tries to chat with Laughing Squid founder Scott Beale over the din. Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis and Twitter cofounder Evan Williams, probably fed up with the crowds, have ditched 330 Ritch for the Plista party at Fluid.
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Next Establishment
explainer
What's "follow spam" on Twitter?
I feel sorry for Twitter founder Ev Williams. The self-appointed A-listers who've flocked to his service are building an echo chamber worse than the blogosphere circa 1999. Today's pretend crisis: Williams has set an arbitrary limit that allows most Twitter users to follow no more than 2,000 other users' updates. The hip response is to claim that of course you need way more than that. But seriously, why would anyone try to follow 3,000 Twits? I've summarized Williams's lengthy post explaining the "follow spam" problem. He left out the part where it costs you money: More »
acquisitions
Twitter-Summize a classic hire-acquire deal
Twitter has bought Summize, a search engine which indexes Twitter messages. It's hard to imagine Summize going anywhere else. But this deal is not about "strategic fit" or any such nonsense. No, it's about how the cleverly lazy founders of Twitter have found a way around the biggest management headache of all: Hiring employees. Twitter's substantial downtime, and a subsequent blame game about whether former architect Blaine Cook was at fault, shows how often technological problems come down to people. We actually don't think Cook made bad technical decisions — but it's now pretty clear that he was more interested in moving on than staying at Twitter and arguing with founder Ev Williams about how to fix the site. At $15 million, Summize might actually be a cheaper solution than trying to hire a conventional replacement for Cook. More »
we read twitter so you don't have to
Evan Williams's well-timed vacation
When his service is struggling with uptime at a high-profile event like Apple's WWDC, what does Twitter cofounder Evan Williams do? Take some personal downtime. He and wife Sara Morishige are vacationing from an undisclosed location — one that involves wakeboarding, tennis, chess, and dancing. While Williams relaxed, TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington went nuts. Again.
breakdowns
TechCrunch server out -- will Evan Williams have a breakdown?
TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington has been publicly losing his mind over Twitter's outages. Now it's his turn to have a server outage. Which makes us wonder: Will losing his TechCrunch fix drive Twitter founder Evan Williams around the bend? Somehow, we don't think so.
twitter
Despite reports, Twitter funding not done
GigaOm reports: that Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams "reached an agreement with investors today to raise $15 million in funding at around $80 million pre-money valuation. "It's not true," a VC involved in the deal tells us. "Nothing is done." Silicon Alley Insider's sources concur.
twitter
Why VCs love Twitter's downtime problems
Last we heard about microblogging service Twitter's latest funding round, Union Square Ventures partner Albert Wenger told us — and, via Twitter, the world — that he was taking a lunch meeting at Twitter HQ. That was April 25. Despite rumors of an imminent deal, there's been no announcement. So why can't Wenger and his USV partner Fred Wilson close the deal? One theory: an unexpected bidding war over a service that grows more mainstream every day. A source familiar with this type of funding situation explains: "You know that thing about failure is an orphan, success has a million dads? VCs want to buy the right to say Twitter was theirs." And for this crowd, Twitter's downtime problems are a bonus. More »
once you're lucky, twice you're good
