Valleywag: Monster

Michael Birch's first social networking sellout a blowout

Owen Thomas — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:40:00 PDT

In 2003, social networking was not yet faddish. Michael Birch sold his self-admitted Friendster clone, Ringo, to online dating site Tickle for a pittance. He came to see that as a mistake, and went on to found Bebo, which he sold to AOL for a giggle-inducing $850 million. A cautionary tale for AOL: Tickle, now a unit of online jobs site Monster, laid off most of its employees in April, and informed its users by email over the weekend that Ringo was shutting down for good. (Photo by Michael Birch)

Chadrick worships at the Church of Google

Jackson West — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:00:00 PDT

Metaversality's Chadrick Baker, our adorably optimistic mascot, intends to become a minister in the Church of Google, a new organization for worshippers of the almighty algorithm. Commandments not issued from on high in Mountain View include "Thou shalt not build thy own commercial-free Search Engine, for I am a jealous Engine, bringing law suits and plagues against the fathers of the children unto the third and fourth generations," and "Thou shalt not manipulate Search Results. Search Engine Optimization is but the work of Microsoft." And praying to your new god is as simple as a search query.

Followers have even posted nine proofs of Google's godliness, thought I'm not sure it would pass a test of logical consistency. The prayers are kinda funny, but the hate mail is rather disappointing — the true believers are probably still busy sending emails to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I, for one, am unshaken in my belief in the Invisible Pink Unicorn, blessed be her holy hooves.

Commercial real estate vacancies show no sign of dot-bomb 2.0

Jackson West — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:40:00 PDT

Recent reports from local real estate trackers put the amount of office space relinquished by local companies in the last quarter at the highest it has been since the third quarter of 2002 — 436,933 sq. ft, according to commercial broker CB Richard Ellis, or the equivalent of nearly all the space in the Transamerica pyramid. The East Bay and the South Bay also saw an uptick in vacancies. The bankruptcies of Sharper Image, Pay By Touch, and RedEnvelope helped push up San Francisco's vacancy rate, but South of Market remained an untouched bubble of business leases, thanks to expansion by Monster.com, Advent Software, and Splunk. (Photo by Thierry)

Former Monster president charged with winkling $13.5 million from shareholders

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 01 May 2008 10:40:00 PDT

Federal prosecutors allege former Monster.com president and COO James Treacy bolstered the value of his company stock options through illegal backdating, which is when executives retroactively fix the books so it looks like they were granted company shares at a lower value than where they actually traed, increasing their take when they sell. Treacy received a total of $23 million exercising his company stock options but about $13.5 million came from "the in-the-money portion of backdated option grants," prosecutors allege. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed seperate charges against Treacy. "Mr. Treacy is completely innocent of these charges and looks forward to being vindicated at trial," his lawyer told the WSJ. And really, how can you not trust a mug like his?

Monster, Palm and three other tech companies own $856 million in paper no one wants to buy

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 07:00:00 PDT

Instead of holding onto cash, tech firms such as Monster, Palm, Intuit, EarthLink and MetroPCS in recent years bought something called auction-rate securities. Basically — very basically — that means these companies loaned out around $856 million because banks told them they'd earn more than they would just holding on to the cash. Only thing is now, with the credit markets being what they are — crappy — no one else wants to buy the rights to collect on those loans. So all that cash is sewn up in paper. That could soon hurt because the companies are going to need that cash eventually, an exec at one Wall Street trading firm told the WSJ. And when they do, he said, they should expect "a steep loss."

The 10 most memorable tech Super Bowl ads

Nicholas Carlson — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 05:00:39 PST

Behold the best tech ad in Super Bowl history: Apple's "1984" ad, which cost $1.6 million to make and run, and only aired nationally once. The following nine ads, while perhaps not as iconic, are all fascinating in how they seek to make the mysteries of tech compelling to the masses.

Apple's "1984" ad

Monster.com from 1999

CareerBuilder.com from 2005

GoDaddy from 2005

Xerox from 1977

E*Trade from 1999

Pets.com from 2000

Computer.com from 2000

SalesGenie.com from 2007

OurBeginnings in 2000

These tech stocks leave you exposed to today's bad news

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:55:31 PST

On Friday, Citigroup's Mark Mahaney judged tech stocks on four criteria: International exposure, countercyclical hedges, least risk to 2008 Wall Street estimates and intrinsic valuation. Which means what? Dunno. Go to Seeking Alpha for that. But to find out if your company's on the OK or Not-So-OK list in light of this morning's Fed rate cut and stock-market dive, check out this list.

The don't panic (yet) list: Amazon.com, eBay and Google, because they're not dependent on the U.S. Expedia, eBay, Google and Priceline, because a bad economy makes the good deals they find more valuable. IAC and Monster are OK because of their healthy "free cash flow yield." Got that?
The go ahead, panic list isn't much of a list: It's Yahoo. Duh.

(Photo by azrainman)

Safe to say that your data is not safe

Tim Faulkner — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 08:40:45 PDT

After stalling for five days before addressing the theft of 1.3 million user profiles, executives at the job site Monster now admits the theft may have occurred earlier and been more extensive, but they still do not know: "We're assuming it is a large number. It could easily be in the millions," CEO Sal Iannuzzi told Reuters. "To be safe, he said, each Monster.com user should assume that his or her contact information has been taken." Yes, it is safe to assume a Monster user profile is not safe.

"Monster.com waited five days to tell its ...

Mary Jane Irwin — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:43:24 PDT

"Monster.com waited five days to tell its users about a security breach that resulted in the theft of confidential information from some 1.3 million job seekers," reports Reuters. It wasn't until after computer security firm Symantec issued a warning that Monster took action. If no one knows about it, it's apparently not a problem. [Boing Boing]

Monster's initial, capricious response to ...

Tim Faulkner — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 09:34:53 PDT

Monster's initial, capricious response to a phishing attack targeted at users of the job site: "In fact, the information that is gathered from Monster is no different than that displayed in a phone book." Two days later, "Monster respects your privacy and understands the risk involved in making your personal information public" as it finally responds to halt the flow of user data and bad PR. [PC World]

Symantec discovered that Monster.com users ...

Tim Faulkner — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:26:56 PDT

Symantec discovered that Monster.com users were being victimized by phishing emails after hundreds of thousands of user names, e-mail addresses, home addresses and phone numbers were harvested using stolen Monster.com log-ins. When contacted by the security firm, Monster.com denied any problem: "To the best of our knowledge, this is not a hack of Monster's security, rather, legitimate customer credentials are being used to log in to the database," said Patrick Manzo, vice president of compliance and fraud prevention at Monster. [BBC News]

Monster CFO Chris Power resigned on Friday, ...

Megan McCarthy — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:35:21 PDT

Monster CFO Chris Power resigned on Friday, according to an SEC document filed today. No word on a replacement, or why Power resigned. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Who's Gonna Buy Monster?

confonz — Fri, 04 May 2007 10:03:41 PDT

CONFONZ — That damn Monster is still outside your house, peeking in the windows. Every once in a while, it knocks on the window and quietly suggests that you need a new job. Well, it seems as though that Monster's got its own window knockers, and they're carrying cash. Earlier this week, the dot com's stock price leapt up like frogs in a dynamite pond. All over rumors of an impending buyer. After the jump, we look at the most recent round of rumored ruffian buyers.
As if it weren't bad enough to work for a company's who's mascot has some strange trumpet-based nose, now the poor folks who run this fairly successful site have to worry that they're going to be snarfed up by the Tribune (Note the Favicon defaults to a Sun logo...) company, or worse yet McClatchy. Both of these newspaper companies are desperately poor, thanks to years of losing marketshare to Craigslist, of all places, and the mind boggles at just how, in fact, a company that's biggest paper is the Miami Herald could afford to buy such a successful startup.
Of course, the real sexy buyout rumor is, surprise! Google. Just imagine how excited all those vets working at Military.com will be when their shares get swapped for 10 times their current value! Of course, rumors of Google buying Monster are vastly overstated. In all actuality, it's far more likely that Gannett will end up the buyer. It's another newspaper company, but at least it already owns web properties, namely, Careerbuilder.com.

News notes: Here be one less monster

Nick Douglas — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:23:47 PST

The former CEO of Monster.com, who already stepped down from that post and as board chairman over the industry-wide stock option backdating scandal, just lost his seat on the board as well. Monster announced Andrew McKelvey's resignation from the board this morning. [Washington Post]
Spot Runner, an ad company that sells generic cut-and-paste TV commercials, took $40 million in funding. With a business-to-business product that can run under a hundred bucks, it's a mystery how this company will become profitable — so this $40-million investor debt may save the world from a hegemony of excruciatingly dull stock-footage ads. [LA Times]
The New York Times searches for an exciting description of the wild dot-com boom. It fails. "The words 'Internet' and 'bust' were rarely used in the same sentence." [NY Times]
A VP at Nielsen NetRatings searches for a non-asinine summary of why companies are finally demanding reliable web traffic stats. He fails. "When you grow up, you have to do certain things." [NY Times]
Former CIA agent and Open Source Solutions, Inc. founder accuses Google of working with the CIA. It's not the first time someone's alleged Google is secretly cooperating with federal agents. [Disgrunt via Good Morning Silicon Valley]