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Auren Hoffman's fine whine
In vino veritas, the college kids say. But Auren Hoffman doesn't think there's much truth in wine. The entrepreneur rails against the practice of collecting and drinking wine in a recent blog post, going so far to call it — well, we'll just let him speak for himself:In fact, it is a scam. I'm not saying wine is totally useless and that no one likes it ... but I am saying that the great majority of people that like wine, like it because so many other people around them like wine. In this case, the Emperor might have some cloths, but it ain't more than a speedo and some sandals.We think that wine, with its ability to bring momentary but powerful self-confidence and a tendency to make the whole world seem a lot easier to deal with, is far less of a scam, no matter what price you pay, than other projects. Like, say, Hoffman's reputation-evaluation startup Rapleaf. So, we leave it up to the readers. What do you think is the bigger scam, Rapleaf or wine? Vote in our poll, after the jump. More »
rapleaf
Can Auren Hoffman's reputation get any worse?
Silver-tongued entrepreneur Auren Hoffman was able to extinguish a growing wave of criticism directed at his people-search company Rapleaf with a single blog post. He promised to mend his ways and bring fixes to Rapleaf's privacy practices. We didn't have much faith in Rapleaf's reform — Hoffman's post was mostly rhetoric, little change. A week later, Hoffman has gone out of his way to prove our doubts by partnering with MerchantCircle. MerchantCircle, of course, is the local merchant directory we've criticized before. Of course, Rapleaf and MerchantCircle are in some ways a perfect match. More »
followup
Auren Hoffman's cynical ploy to set your profile "free"
Rapleaf is bragging that founder Auren Hoffman is an early signer of the Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web. That blustering broadside, authored by Plaxo's Joseph Smarr, Macromedia founder Marc Canter, videoblogger Robert Scoble, and TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, wants to set your online profiles and friends lists, trapped on sites like Facebook, free. The central tenet of the Bill? That individual users retain "ownership of their own personal information" and that users have the "freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites." Which could come in handy as people begin to question Rapleaf's scraping of profile data from social networks — data these networks claim to own and have exclusive rights to. More »
auren hoffman
The rap on Rapleaf, the "trust meter" you can't trust
Auren Hoffman, networker extraordinaire, hardly flies under the Silicon Valley radar. But his latest venture, Rapleaf, backed by Facebook investor Peter Thiel and launched more than a year ago, has managed to do so. Until recently. So what is Rapleaf, exactly, and why are people buzzing about it now? Hard to say — no, really. Launched as a "trust meter," a way to quantify people's business ethics — like eBay's buyer and seller ratings, but independent of any one site — Rapleaf's value proposition and stated goals have taken several perplexing twists and turns. And as with Hoffman's party patter, Rapleaf's premise is initially alluring, but leaves you feeling slightly nauseated. More »
12:42 PM on Thu Sep 6 2007
By Tim Faulkner
1,663 views,
3 comments
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MerchantCircle provides a circle jerk for local businesses
The first rule of Valleywag: Never pitch Valleywag. But sometimes the temptation just proves too great. In response to a post about Google and Yelp's rivalry in local search, a MerchantCircle employee contacted us to tout the company's supposed leadership in the market, pitching the site for some Valleywag love. Well, here's some tough love. We've looked into MerchantCircle's business model .. and found nothing but self-love. More »
10:17 AM on Mon Aug 20 2007
By Tim Faulkner
3,301 views,
7 comments
Latest by SnowingCookies: @SajiliBabbas: exactly the same reason why I am here. the automated cold-calling from them is still happening, received one just an hour ago. by doing a quick google-search on their name, mostly bad reviews are returned. if they claim to handle this problem for merchants, why can they not first handle more »
