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Sarah Lacy's Twitter snit
Having made her name on a cover story about Digg's Kevin Rose and a $60 million fortune he has yet to make, tech columnist Sarah Lacy has paused to sniff dismissively at (questionably accurate) reports that Twitter has raised $20 million in venture capital. Lacy has a point: It should not surprise anyone that Twitter is raising venture capital; there are few obvious companies which can use the money, and Twitter, whose microblogging service is growing in popularity but not, measurably, in revenues, is one of them. More »
dustin moskovitz
Facebook frayed by founders' feud
Dustin Moskovitz, Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard roommate, recently stopped speaking to him. This has made things awkward at Facebook's Palo Alto campus, as Moskovitz is the last reminder walking around that Zuckerberg was not Facebook's sole founder. The two have resumed talking, but Moskovitz, seeking to dissociate himself from his college chum's creation, had dropped the title of vice president and asked for his bio and photograph to be taken off the company's PR website. He's now taken the title of "technical lead," and is working behind the scenes on Facebook's infrastructure. (Moskovitz was not always so publicity-shy: He gladly spoke about Facebook's wireless initiatives at the CTIA conference last fall, and, in a comment left after this post was published, denies a rift and blames Valleywag for his lowered profile.) Why the reported split, after they've worked together so long? More »
nerdfight
Grayboxx founder Bob Chandra not-so-anonymously flaming his investors
Shortly after posting an item suggesting that Sierra Ventures' Jeff Loomans is a lying, greedy venture capitalist (and receiving comments to the effect of "what do you expect from a creative capitalist?") we received a number of emails outing the founder of local search specialist Grayboxx, Bob Chandra, as the author of the missive. Granted, discretion isn't one of Chandra's strengths — he posted nearly the exact same message from his own account on LinkedIn. That said, a friend of Valleywag who's worked at several successful venture-backed startups nearly gave us a high-five for calling to light the errors of Loomans's ways. While Loomans rules from a well-funded throne, Chandra can at least count on the entrepreneur mob who seem to have his back in this now very public tiff.
Valleywag emeritus offers unsolicited advice for Michael Arrington
Newly softhearted Gawker Media head Nick Denton offers some kindly advice for TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington: "@Michael Arrington: Hey, everybody has been expecting the grand roll-up ever since you hired Heather. I don't see it happening. Certainly don't see it sticking. And, without a roll-up, you have a niche Valley site with some 3% of the traffic of Gawker or Weblogs Inc. Good luck with that when the tech bubble bursts!"
Newly softhearted Gawker Media head Nick Denton offers some kindly advice for TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington: "@Michael Arrington: Hey, everybody has been expecting the grand roll-up ever since you hired Heather. I don't see it happening. Certainly don't see it sticking. And, without a roll-up, you have a niche Valley site with some 3% of the traffic of Gawker or Weblogs Inc. Good luck with that when the tech bubble bursts!"
Michael Arrington, Pete Cashmore puff up egos, traffic
At last night's PopSugar-TechCrunch party, I hadn't hoped to become part of the story, but LA Times reporter David Sarno suggested Arrington's 86ing of my date inspired Mashable's Pete Cashmore to invent a story about his own ouster. I don't know whether there's anything to Sarno's theory. But I do know this: Cashmore and Arrington are full of it if they think either of their operations are "top 10 blogs." (Photo by Robert Scoble)
nerdfight
Yahoo turf wars get nasty, and we love it
While Google, Microsoft, News Corp., and AOL fight to get a piece of Yahoo, the target's internal turf wars are turning ever more vicious. It's a lovely side effect — for us, at any rate. The latest slagfest hit Yahoo VP David Pann, whom our tipster describes as having been in charge of "Panama marketplace optimization" — tweaking the sale and placement of ads to make them more profitable. But no longer. Our tipster says Pann has been "shunted off to a quiet corner" and replaced by "his archrival," VP Mark Morrissey, pictured. Pann's already had his revenge, however. More »
nerdfight
Vimeo designer says Flickr ripped off his design
"Flickr knocked off my player design," departed Connected Ventures cofounder and Vimeo designer Zach Klein writes on his blog. "I hope I at least get a free brunch out of this." Not likely. Though a quick look at the stats suggest someone's going to eat Vimeo's lunch.
nerdfight
Venture capitalist and "futurist" Esther Dyson has no interest in investing in any tech-blog empire aggregated by Michael Arrington. "The beauty of blogs is that they're decentralized," Dyson tells Big Think. She's more interested in colonizing space, which seems about as likely to come true as the TechCrunch editor's fantasies of heading up a rollup of other tech blogs. More »
Esther Dyson not interested in Arrington's imperial blog ambitions
Venture capitalist and "futurist" Esther Dyson has no interest in investing in any tech-blog empire aggregated by Michael Arrington. "The beauty of blogs is that they're decentralized," Dyson tells Big Think. She's more interested in colonizing space, which seems about as likely to come true as the TechCrunch editor's fantasies of heading up a rollup of other tech blogs. More »
blogging for dollars
Calacanis explains how Denton rips off his writers with "best pay in the business"
The week's not complete until bulldog-cute Mahalo chief Jason Calacanis writes in. Today JC emailed twice to call out a gaping hole in the much-discussed New Dentonomics of our 2008 Valleywag pay scale. His numbers are out of date; our new pageview rate for the second quarter is in, and it's $6.50 per thousand pageviews. But Calacanis spotted a bigger slap to the face than the CPM, one so big that Portfolio blogger Felix Salmon will have to do a whole 'nother post now to say he knew it all along. Can you guess what it is?More »
nerdfight
Jason Calacanis begs rival conference producer to switch sides
Our commenters are revolting. Specifically, over our continuing coverage of Jason Calacanis, who is famous on the Internet for owning two adorable bulldogs. But there's something charming about the sheer clumsiness of Calacanis's relentless hucksterism. Take the live broadcast he conducted to beg Chris Shipley, the producer of tech-startup conference Demo, to come work on Calacanis and Michael Arrington's rival TechCrunch50 conference. "Be part of the winning team! We are the street level team ... blue collar. Everybody needs to support the Jason Nation." J-Dawg, with that headset look, shouldn't you be playing CounterStrike? And on what planet are you and Arrington "blue-collar"? I can only imagine what Arrington said to you when you tried to put him on the speaker — no doubt something as subtle and polite as "Demo needs to die." The video: More »
conferences
TechCrunch50 vs. Demo -- a fight guide
Conference gnomes will need to choose sides. Blog moguls Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington have teamed up to schedule their TechCrunch50 show in September in direct competition to Chris Shipley's Demofall event. I've prepared a cheat sheet to follow the action at a distance. More »
nerdfight
Jason Calacanis's Twitterholic ban proves not to be a joke
Once the top bulldog, Jason Calacanis had climbed back to No. 2 on Twitterholic, outranked only by Barack Obama — only to be struck from the ranks. Twitterholic is a favored popularity index among The 250 and their many spam-loving followers. The reason for the booting? An April Fools' stunt which was never reversed, putting Robert Scoble back in second, and first in the key chubby, aging white-man demo — and giving us one more reason to hate April Fools' Day.
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Rafat Ali's blogging hopes and dreams: to be as boring and profitable as Reed Elsevier
It takes a brave man to get in the middle of TechCrunch's bloggin' VC Michael Arrington and PaidContent founding editor Rafat Ali as they duke it out over the future of their micromedia empires. Timesman Saul Hansell is nothing but brave. In a Bits blog post, he quotes Rafat Ali's new hired hand Nathan Richardson saying that PaidContent differentiates itself from TechCrunch, Silicon Alley Insider and our own Valleywag because it "has not gone down the road of following personal foibles." Then, towards the end of the piece, Ali himself suggeests that Arrington is thinking too small by gunning for CNET:The big market for us is the trade media. Companies like Reed Elsevier, Nielsen, Incisive and Informa play in this market, not these blogs.But are these publishers so evenhanded? Trade publications have a history of being self-interested boosters for the markets they cover. More »
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Daring Fireball blogger's Wired takedown fizzles
The latest flaming bomb from Mac blogger John Gruber: "How Leander Kahney Got Everything Wrong by Being a Fucking Jackass." Kahney's sin? Writing Wired's latest cover story, ""How Apple Got Everything Right by Doing Everything Wrong." Kahney's thesis: Apple succeeds despite violating Google's "don't be evil" rules of business. Gruber's response? Name-calling, starting in the headline. Gruber attacks with stabbing frenzy:The whole contrast-with-Google angle makes no sense, holds up to no scrutiny, and serves no purpose other than to reach the punchy conclusion that Apple is "irredeemably evil." By Kahney's logic, any company that is different from Google —- and clearly most companies are far more different from Google than Apple is —- is evil.More »
nerdfight
Wired editor Leander Kahney vs. Fake Steve Jobs -- guess who wins?
Wired editor Leander Kahney went up against Forbes editor Dan Lyons's Fake Steve Jobs character in a three-round mano-a-mano debate about Apple. Lyons completely wipes the floor with Kahney. Did Wired ever think this would be a fair fight? This utterly unlevel playing field shows why we're glad we were wrong about Leander Kahney being Fake Steve. This short excerpt really sums it up: More »
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Will blogger finally get to "#&%$!ing drop" Jason Calacanis tonight?
Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis will host a dinner at New York Chinese restaurant Golden Unicorn tonight. He's calling it Dim Sum 2.0. I'm going, but not for the lazy susan full of food. The last time Calacanis hosted one of these during a trip to New York, it was the night after Calacanis and DealBreaker blogger John Carney nearly came to blows. At the end of a fundraiser for Mouse, Carney allegedly told Calacanis "I will #&%$!ing drop you to the floor." The pair didn't come to blows, but maybe they just needed a little encouragement?
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