<![CDATA[Valleywag: Randi Zuckerberg]]> http://cache.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/valleywag.com.png <![CDATA[Valleywag: Randi Zuckerberg]]> http://valleywag.com/tag/randi zuckerberg http://valleywag.com/tag/randi zuckerberg <![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?

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Valleywag-5088231 Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:40:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5088231&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg moonlights for Tina Brown ]]> In New York, the notion that the girl in marketing really wants to be a Broadway singer is taken for granted. In Silicon Valley, it's seen as a bit bizarre. But I'm charmed by Facebooker Randi Zuckerberg's career aspirations. Her singing-and-dancing sideline, first seen in "Valleyfreude," has waxed and waned with the demands of her day job. (Yes, her younger brother, Mark, is her employer.) But she's back with a paean to undecided voters, "Should I Red or Should I Blue?", which she produced (and sang) for Tina Brown's overstaffed, undertrafficked website, the Daily Beast.

Something about this arrangement smacks of social climbing. But who's climbing whom? Randi Zuckerberg, one of Facebook's early employees, who helped the site grow to 100 million users? Or a has-been magazine editor, famous in Manhattan but nowhere else, grappling with how to adapt her outrageous spending habits to a far leaner medium, and leaned on her pal Barry Diller to fund and launch the site, rather than trying the entrepreneurial route?

From a Left Coast vantage point, it looks like Brown is trying to attach herself to Zuckerberg's star, not the other way around. Zuckerberg, cleverly, registered her own website, shouldiredorshouldiblue.com. A wise hedge, should Brown's website go down in expensive flames.

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Valleywag-5066942 Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:00:00 PDT Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5066942&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Correct out-of-touch New York style rag's Internet gossip! ]]> It's complicated. God, is it ever. The same October Details story that follows around New York's "Internet playboys" and their bicoastal hangers-on runs with this chart of who dated, funded, or hated in this overdocumented side of the Web scene. So sweet to know we're not the only ones keeping a scorecard, but one of its subjects, Caroline McCarthy, claims there's inaccuracies! Let's do Details and the kids recently fanning their fameballs from the coverage a favor and fix it up then. Ready? Let loose in the comments with your errata.

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Valleywag-5057647 Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:20:00 PDT Melissa Gira Grant http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5057647&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Facebook's Brandee Barker hides from camera while denying Microsoft buyout ]]> BoomTown's Kara Swisher went to Palo Alto’s MacArthur Park restaurant for a luncheon hosted by Germany’s Hubert Burda Media yesterday, the organizers of the DLD conference. A target of her shaky videocam work: Facebook flack Brandee Barker, who hid behind a fern. Asked if Microsoft was buying Facebook, Barker shouted, "Never!" Brave words, if not exactly consistent with Facebook's fiduciary duties to shareholders to consider all reasonable offers. Besides Barker, Swisher captured Silicon Valley figures like nerd chanteuse Randi Zuckerberg; Wired writer Steven Levy, fresh from his fly-on-the-wall writeup of the making of Google's Chrome browser; and layoff-happy Loic Le Meur. The crowd is shown descending into a happy drunkenness, giggling about Wall Street all the way down. After the jump, the full clip and a guide to the best moments:

  • 0:55 Loic Le Meur is worried about the economy.
  • 1:14 Brandee Barker hides behind a fern, says Facebook will never sell to Microsoft
  • 2:30 BillShrink’s Peter Pham says a lot of startups are going to go under
  • 2:36 Randi Zuckerberg wants you to register to vote
  • 3:32 Steven Levy says the arrow points no where but up
  • 5:43 Israeli superinvestor Yossi Vardi says that Lehman Brothers stock isn't worth as much as World of Warcraft shields.
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Valleywag-5051348 Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:00:00 PDT Nicholas Carlson http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5051348&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Julia Allison underling calls ConnectU founders "spoiled bitches," then tries to recruit them ]]> ConnectU cofounders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, even as they're trying to wrestle a chunk of Facebook from former Harvard school chum Mark Zuckerberg, are training for the double-shell rowing event at the Olympics. Maureen O'Connor, an editor at Julia Allison's entertainment startup, NonSociety, hoped the privileged pair would send the site updates from Beijing. So O'Connor emailed Guest of a Guest editor Rachelle Hruska — who apparently knows the fair-haired Harvard-grad twins — to ask for an introduction. One small problem.

Hruska noted that O'Connor's other blog, Ivygate, had called the twins "spoiled bitches that tried to lay one on the invincible Mark Zuckerberg and failed." We don't see the problem with hiring "spoiled bitches" to work at NonSociety — they'll fit right in with Allison! Had Hruska really been cutting, she'd have asked how Julia Allison's latest BFF, Randi Zuckerberg — older sister of the man the Winklevosses accused of stealing ConnectU's code for Facebook — would feel about the hire.

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Valleywag-5033907 Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:00:00 PDT Jackson West http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5033907&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Julia Allison is in town ]]> Back in San Francisco: Wired covergirl "Julia Alison," attending Facebook's F8 developers conference. Say what you want about her, just get her name right — so she can Google herself later. As tight as Allison is with Randi Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg's older sis, having attended Randi's Vegas bachelorette party, that's still not enough to get her name badge spelled correctly.

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Valleywag-5028670 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:20:00 PDT Melissa Gira Grant http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5028670&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Dating Mark Zuckerberg: the rules ]]> A year ago this summer, Priscilla Chan graduated from Harvard and moved to Palo Alto to live near her boyfriend, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. But before she did, Chan and Zuckerberg, pictured, held a series of "negotiations" over how often she would get to see him, according to Sarah Lacy's book Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good. The final contract, according to Lacy:

One date per week, a minimum of a hundred minutes of alone time, not in his apartment and definitely not at Facebook.

Chan recently squired Zuckerberg to his sister Randi's wedding. No word on who caught the bouquet, and Facebook insiders are mum about the couple's prospects of an engagement. Come to think of that, perhaps that's a good thing. If dating was this tough, can you imagine working out the prenup?

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Valleywag-5014640 Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:40:00 PDT Nicholas Carlson http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5014640&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Photos from Randi Zuckerberg's wedding ]]> Randi in JamaicaDarlings, everyone who's anyone is flying to a Caribbean island to get married. Larry Page and Lucy Southworth did the deed on some spit of sand called Necker Island. Randi Zuckerberg? The Facebooker took over something like the entire island of Jamaica to get hitched to venture-capital associate Brent Tworetzky. Or just Runaway Bay — our sources can't get that part entirely straight. But we did get a batch of photos from the wedding. A destination wedding in Jamaica? Expensive. Making your younger brother, who's ostensibly your boss and worth $4 billion on paper, dress in a turquoise vest and an ill-fitting tuxedo shirt? Priceless. The photos:

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Valleywag-5013115 Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:00:00 PDT Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5013115&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Hollywood power player Randi Zuckerberg struts her stuff ]]>
Meet Randi Jayne Zuckerberg Tworetzky, Facebook's rep in Tinseltown, who scored No. 45 on The Hollywood Reporter's list of digital power players. The newlywed, Mark's older sister, was a surprising choice — an infuriating one, to some of our tipsters — but she got the props for brokering content deals with ABC and Comcast, no small feat. Still, we're less interested in Randi Tworetzky's business dealings than in Randi Jayne's musical stylings. (If Hollywood had any sense, they would, to.) Which makes this lip dub of her singing "Going to the Chapel" utterly frustrating. Randi, we don't want to watch you mouth the words. Girl, sing out! (Video by Julia Allison)

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Valleywag-5013093 Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:00:00 PDT Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5013093&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Z is for Zuckerberg, the richest of all ]]> Mark ZuckerbergMoney isn't everything. Mark Zuckerberg may have the highest net worth among his generation of entrepreneurs, but the Facebook CEO only gets 21 out of 294 pages in Sarah Lacy's new Web 2.0 book, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good. That's 16 more than his sister, nerd chanteuse Randi Jayne Zuckerberg, which tells us Lacy has her priorities all wrong. The Zuckerbergs' index page:

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Previously:

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Valleywag-390663 Thu, 15 May 2008 08:20:00 PDT Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=390663&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Facebook has a prom and Julia Allison will be attending ]]> Congratulations, Facebookers! Notorious New York nobody and Silicon Alley wantrepreneur Julia Allison plans to grace your "Facebook Prom" with her presence. She twitters:

OMG. I just got invited to the Facebook Prom!!!! No, not by @randijayne, although I'm sure she's going to be jealous of my superhot date ;)
Obviously, Allison is after the prom queen crown, enough that she's willing to elbow Facebook marketer Randi Zuckerberg out of the way if need be, despite having just attended her Vegas bachelorette party. Send us photos of Facebook's other contenders. ]]>
Valleywag-385350 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:40:00 PDT Nicholas Carlson http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=385350&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Facebook NSFW! Julia Allison and other pics from Randi Zuckerberg's Vegas bachelorette ]]> Can you imagine a photo op that Julia Allison wouldn't attend? What happens in Vegas goes instantly to Valleywag, Allison knows, and so she flew to Las Vegas to attend Randi Zuckerberg's bachelorette party. Zuckerberg, whose wig-and-sunglasses disguise did not deter the Web's paparazzi, is a budding Web video star, Facebook's marketing director, and, unlike younger brother Mark, an actual Harvard graduate. In what's surely a first, Allison, the tech-obsessed TV personality, managed not to hog the camera; she's in only one of the shots. Facebook's Meagan Marks also appears sporting what looks like a freshly acquired head wound. A slip and fall on the dance floor? Our informants are investigating. In the meantime, enjoy the evidence of Zuckerberg's bacchanal. A warning: If plastic sex toys offend your coworkers, one photo may be unsuitable for office computers.

Update: Julia Allison has posted another photo of herself with Zuckerberg. Has no one ever told her that only the bride wears white?

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Valleywag-384901 Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:20:00 PDT Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=384901&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Details of Randi Zuckerberg's bachelorette party in Vegas ]]> We hear that friends of Randi Zuckerberg, better known as nerd chanteuse Randi Jayne, are surprising the Facebook marketer with a bachelorette party in Las Vegas this weekend. The place: the Hard Rock Hotel, where they've secured two suites. (Zuckerberg is set to wed Brent Tworetzky, an associate at Shasta Ventures, in May.) The bacchanalia's expected to last all weekend, including a dinner at Tao and a night out at Rain. Who's going?

Attendees include fellow Facebooker Meagan Marks as well as Zuckerberg's sisters. What about Julia Allison, the New York Web personality who tagged along for an '80s-themed photo shoot with Zuckerberg? She's been known to attend the opening of an email, and Zuckerberg's bachelorette is considerably more momentous. Allison's also bringing sidekick Meghan Asha Parikh, the Silicon Valley heiress, and that annoyingly vapid handbag designer whose name we forget. (Surprisingly, Allison didn't leak her own social calendar to us this time, though she confirms by IM that she's "looking forward to the adorable, ineffable, indefatigable Randi's bachelorette party.")

As for Mark, Randi's younger brother? The Facebook CEO is not invited, as he is (a) a dude and (b) no fun at parties. He is, however, going to Tworetzky's bachelor party in New York. More on that as we get the details. (If you have them, send it in.)

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Valleywag-381821 Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:20:00 PDT Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=381821&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Randi Zuckerberg takes Manhattan (and our hearts) ]]> Randi Jayne Zuckerberg, the nerd chanteuse and sister of Facebook CEO Mark, visited the fair island of Manhattan last week and frankly, we'll never be the same. Zuckerberg — sorry boys, she's planning to wed in May — came to town with her mother. Notorious notoriety-possessor Julia Allison roped Zuckerberg into a meal — and one of her lip-sync videos. We haven't seen the video yet, but we're hoping wantrepreneur Allison was smart enough to hand over creative control to the vastly more talented Zuckerberg. She's excellent at show tunes. Stills from the shoot are below.

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Valleywag-377862 Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:40:00 PDT Nicholas Carlson http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=377862&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ New social networks fighting against ebb tide of user interest ]]> Social network fatigue reaches high tide lineSocial network fatigue is nothing new, at least to The 250, and VCs are finally catching on — the Starbucks social network might be the watershed moment when everyone stepped back from updating their umpteenth profile, put down the double-tall soy mocha and said to themselves, "You know, maybe we've reached the point of diminishing returns."

I was on the verge of deleting my Facebook profile, except that as a Gawker Median, I have to have one per company policy. (Well, that, and Facebook's resident chanteuse Randi "Jayne" Zuckerberg left a note on my wall — air kisses!) I settled for deleting all but the basic apps. Just don't tell Mashable's Pete Cashmore the sky is falling. He seems like such a sensitive lad. (Photo by tomnono)

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Valleywag-370089 Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:20:39 PDT Jackson West http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=370089&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Randi Zuckerberg to wed in two months ]]> MarkandJuliaandRandi.jpgLast seen bravely trying to block Julia Allison's path to a geek — her brother, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg — Randi Zuckerberg will marry her college sweetheart, Brent Tworetzky, in May. Lucky guy. As Web chanteuse "Randi Jayne," she long ago sang her way into our heart with her music video, Valleyfreude, embedded below. Update: Randi just texted my boss, "Sweet! You just saved me money on wedding invites! ;-)"

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Valleywag-367085 Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:20:00 PDT Nicholas Carlson http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=367085&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ With Randi and Brandee, Dave McClure feels dandy ]]> At Sunday's SXSW afterparty, Facebook fanboy Dave McClure acquired a fan club: Facebookers Web-video auteur Randi Jayne (née Zuckerberg) and Brandee Barker, chief damage-control officer. More photos from the party, after the jump; your best headlines in the comments.

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(Photos by Brian Solis)

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Valleywag-366089 Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:20:30 PDT Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=366089&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ "VC Baby" puts "fun," "ding" in "funding" ]]>

Sung to the tune of "Santa Baby," "VC Baby" tells the tale of an entrepreneur wishing for attention of the financial kind. Play the clip, and then read on to find out the surprising songster behind this little number.

While it looks like comely lifecaster Justine Ezarik, better known as iJustine, who's head over heels for her VC, she's merely lipsynching. The real siren of the piece is Randi Jayne (née Zuckerberg, and yes, she's the Facebook guy's sister) who sings the sultry lyrics. Jayne's fiancé is a VC with Shasta Ventures who served, she says, as her inspiration. Even if this clip, produced by Kevin Rose's Revision3, doesn't approach the level of popularity reached by "Valleyfreude" or the iPhone parody, it's sure to inspire at least one new Valley pickup line: "You can sit on my board anytime."

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Valleywag-333276 Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:44:27 PST Megan McCarthy http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=333276&view=rss&microfeed=true