<![CDATA[Valleywag: family business]]> http://cache.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/valleywag.com.png <![CDATA[Valleywag: family business]]> http://valleywag.com/tag/family business http://valleywag.com/tag/family business <![CDATA[ Facebook CEO's sister turns on her Valley friends ]]> Randi Zuckerberg, the limelight-seeking sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has learned a key lesson of media success: As you scale the ladder, make sure to jab your stiletto heels into the faces of those you climb over. Zuckerberg, whose day job is in Facebook's marketing department, has been writing weekly for former magazine editor Tina Brown's mostly ignored Daily Beast website since it launched — but only recently has she turned mean. We love it, of course. The target of her freshly poisoned pen: the hipster lip dub, those single-shot singalongs so popular with startups and would-be Internet celebrities. What Zuckerberg does write: "In case there was any doubt that the chief purpose of the Internet is to perpetuate narcissism, lip dub videos put that to rest." What she does not write:

She has participated in many a lip-dub video herself, including one with Julia Allison, the New York party attendee who parlayed a career of writing about nothing for magazines to appearing on the cover of magazines for doing nothing. Allison is not mentioned in her piece, but she is surely present within it; Zuckerberg mentions "Flagpole Sitta," a lip dub performed by the employees of Connected Ventures, the ex-startup of Allison's ex-boyfriend Jakob Lodwick.

Allison dispatched, Zuckerberg moves to targets closer to home, taking on the Camp Cyprus 20, the Internet 20somethings who filmed themselves singing along to "Don't Stop Believin'" at a seaside vacation home in Cyprus right as Wall Street imploded. What she does not mention: That the first person we see in the video is her Facebook coworker Dave Morin; Facebook engineers and designers appear later. Zuckerberg slams them all equally: "You hate them for having so much fun — damn that unbridled, financially secure joy!"

Next target: Revision3, the San Francisco online-video startup best known for recording Diggnation, a podcast by Digg founder Kevin Rose. "They probably won't be recording any more lip dubs any time soon, we hear they laid off a third of their staff this week," Zuckerberg writes. Ouch! She could have added that after reading her article, Revision3 also won't be lending out its production facilities for any more of Zuckerberg's music videos, as it did for "Dontcha," a spoof about the iPhone.

Ah, the smell of burnt bridges. Zuckerberg, in person, comes across as shy and self-effacing. The only hint of bile I ever detected was in a previous video, "Valleyfreude," where she mocks Friendster, an also-ran social network crushed by Facebook, and scoffs at Yahoo for offering Facebook a mere $1 billion in an acquisition offer her brother turned down.

But Randi Zuckerberg has always had her eyes on a bigger stage than the Valley. Even her job at Facebook, running the site's election-related features, has been helpful in this regard, landing her on ABC and other news broadcasts to talk about online get-out-the-vote efforts. Now she's moonlighting for Tina Brown, in the hopes of getting her hooks into New York media circles.

The Daily Beast, an unwieldy, overstaffed website, is an unlikely candidate to emerge from next year's economic wreckage. But that won't matter to Zuckerberg: She's already perfected the art of stepping over those she can safely discard. Watch out, Facebookers: Do you think she'll forget how you made her take "Valleyfreude" offline?

]]>
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:40:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5088231&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ More on Sheryl Sandberg's entirely merit-based hire at Facebook ]]> Sheryl_Sandberg.jpgIf Sheryl Sandberg weren't a Harvard grad twice over, we might have believed Facebook's new COO when she said Silicon Valley is a "meritocracy" and that people don't care who you know. Her claim is even more risible now that we learn Sandberg joined Facebook in large part because her brother-in-law is Elevation Partners cofounder Marc Bodnick, a private investor in Facebook.

]]>
Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:20:55 PDT Nicholas Carlson http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=365898&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ A Facebook insider dances her way to the IPO ]]> Randi Jayne gets the rag from ValleywagI've always said that if there's one thing Silicon Valley needs, it's more show tunes. Which is why I'm such a sucker for the oeuvre of Randi Jayne and Jennifer Lee, the comedic duo behind such hits as "How to Get a Guy in Silicon Valley" and "Failure Is Fun (Valleyfreude)." (Jayne, newly solo, has come out with another brilliant number, "Crackberry," which you must go watch immediately.) But if you want to review Jayne's past works, you'll be stymied. "Valleyfreude" has gone missing. "It's a take-down," Jayne's site reads. I can't imagine that the disappearance of "Valleyfreude" anything to do with the fact that Jayne has a day job at Facebook. And that she's the sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. And that Facebook's getting ready for an IPO. Oh, wait. I can imagine that.

"Valleyfreude," is a brilliant piece of work, and I'm not just saying that because its lyrics prominently mention this humble gossip rag. No, I love it because it speaks a truth about Silicon Valley: People are supposed to embrace failure as part of the startup process, but in reality, they love making fun of the losers.

Speaking the truth, of course, is a dangerous activity. Especially if your company is about to go public. The SEC frowns on any truth-telling that goes on outside the formal bounds of an S-1 prospectus.

Jayne, née Zuckerberg, has actively tried to mask her identity; back in February, she declined to give her last name to NewTeeVee's Liz Gannes, who apparently didn't press the matter. (Ace reporting, Gannes!) But if it's a secret, it's an extremely poorly disguised one.

And that makes "Valleyfreude," whose lyrics mock Facebook competitor Friendster and profanely brag about how Facebook rejected a $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo, a dangerous document for SEC regulators to see. Luckily for them, unluckily for Facebook, "Valleyfreude" has spread beyond Jayne's reach, thanks to the wonders of viral video. Here's a replay, courtesy of iFilm Valleywag:

]]>
Mon, 09 Jul 2007 07:34:02 PDT Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=276235&view=rss&microfeed=true