• f8

    Facebook execs to favor widgets built by investors, relatives

    Today at its F8 developers' conference, Facebook will announce a plan to give favored widgets more abilities to promote themselves on the site. The first two apps to get "preferred" status will be Causes and iLike. What does being a "preferred" widgetmaker mean? A source tells us that in the short term, Facebook will simply promote preferred apps in users' News Feeds more often, increasing their chances of spreading from friend to friend. "Basically, it is a subsidy program for their favorite darlings," says our source. Causes is an app backed by former Facebook president Sean Parker; iLike is a startup backed by Marc Bodnick of Elevation Partners, who is also a private Facebook investor and the brother-in-law of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Our source also tells us that after top tier preferred apps, there will be a middle tier of "certified/approved/vetted" applications as well. More »

    10:20 AM on Wed Jul 23 2008
    By Nicholas Carlson
    1,140 views, 4 comments

    Latest by rafa3rafa: Isn't "nepotism" what Silicon Valley is all about? Ridiculous. What is worse is if people just sit on their ass more »

  • party report

    Founders Club partiers revel in the view from the top

    HEARST TOWER, NEW YORK — Far from the sweaty, screaming fans that attended Digg's Brooklyn meetup Wednesday night, the suits of the Alley and Valley gathered last night on the top-most floor of the Hearst Tower for another Founders Club party to celebrate each others' transcendent splendor. All night, giant screens at either end of the party played clips from Citizen Kane, the barely fictionalized biopic based on the life of Hearst Corp.'s own founder, William Randolph Hearst. There wasn't a Hearst in the crowd, but there were those who aspire to be him. Blog moguls like PaidContent's Rafat Ali, Gawker Media's Nick Denton and AlleyCorp's Henry Blodget mingled. New Gifts.com CEO Jason Rapp attended, as did Digg cofounders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's mentor, Valley bad boy Sean Parker, was rumored to be in the crowd as well. Jimmy Wales, cofounder of the world's most comprehensive list of William Randolph Heart's angry responses to Citizen Kane, attended with Andrea Weckerle on his arm. Photos below. More »

    10:00 AM on Fri Jun 6 2008
    By Nicholas Carlson
    1,528 views, Comment

  • once you're lucky, twice you're good

    P is for Parker, the Valley's bad boy

    Sean Parker has had a hand in some of the Valley's biggest successes. His first company, Napster, took the world by storm, but didn't make Parker rich. His second, Plaxo, just sold to Comcast. And his third, Facebook — well, say no more. Except for the bit about him getting kicked out, according to Mark Zuckerberg's legal testimony, for a cocaine arrest. (Parker characterized the incident as "a misunderstanding.") That and more is covered in the 21 pages Sarah Lacy devotes to Parker in Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, new book about Web 2.0. The index page where Parker is listed: More »

    6:00 AM on Thu May 15 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    1,286 views, 4 comments

    Latest by Dweezil: @dingdongditch: I wasn't thinking about pot. more »

  • deals

    Plaxo torn between two lovers?

    Is Plaxo going to Google, as some rumors have it? Possibly. We hear Joe Kraus, a Google executive knee-deep in its effort to catch up in social networking, skipped the company trip to Disneyland this week so he could finish a deal. But other insiders say Google's not doing a deal with Plaxo. Another plausible bidder: Comcast. More »

    5:39 PM on Thu Feb 7 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    1,415 views, 1 comment

    Latest by googoobaby: Joe probably had a previous date with his alien friends and had to get kitted up before the comet passed. more »

  • rumormonger

    Is Plaxo ready to sell to Facebook?

    It's curious that rumors of a Plaxo sale exploded at the same time that Robert Scoble got his Facebook account suspended using a secret, unreleased tool for extracting data from Facebook. Curious, too, that Plaxo is so eager to milk the incident for good PR. While a battle of words takes place in public, we hear that quieter talks are happening behind the scenes: A sale of Plaxo to Facebook. A clash between the companies' backers, though — the powerful VC Michael Moritz and the rising VC star Peter Thiel — could sink any deal. More »

    Feature

    6:30 AM on Fri Jan 4 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    2,770 views, 7 comments

    Latest by scottwired: I'd heard a comcast acquisition of Plaxo was all but done -- that these discussions have been going on for more »

  • lawsuits

    Sean Parker was kicked out of Facebook for cocaine-related arrest


    There was a rumor floating around last year that Valley bad boy Sean Parker was forced out of startup Plaxo for a cocaine arrest. Turns out that rumor wasn't exactly true. According to a transcription of Mark Zuckerberg's deposition from the ConnectU v. Facebook case, it was Facebook, not Plaxo, which dropped Peter Thiel's protégé from its executive ranks after Parker was arrested for possession while at a house party. A house party Parker attended with a female Facebook employee who was also a Stanford undergrad at the time. Parker earlier told Valleywag that the arrest was "a misunderstanding." We'll say.

    4:05 PM on Wed Nov 28 2007
    By Megan McCarthy
    2,087 views, 5 comments

    Latest by cowsandmilk: @Rick: transcripts always make people look like blathering morons. That's a well known fact. more »

  • your privacy is an illusion

    Sean Parker drops out of college, again and again and again

    Earlier this week, we noted that on Facebook, Sean Parker, the social network's former president, claimed to have graduated simultaneously, from Columbia, Sarah Lawrence, Pepperdine, USC, UCLA, UC-Berkeley, New York University, and Stanford, in 2002. As far as we can determine, the only diploma Parker has ever received was from Oakton High School. (A fellow northern Virginian!) Parker's profile has since been updated. He no longer belongs to those colleges' Facebook networks, a status which allowed him to view otherwise private student and alumni profiles. Oddly, though, he still claims to have attended those schools in the "Education" section of his profile. Parker, still a Facebook investor, now works at Peter Thiel's venture capital firm, the Founders Fund. One hopes the fund's investors weren't going on Parker's fictional degrees when they plunked down their cash.

    3:13 PM on Thu Nov 1 2007
    By Owen Thomas
    386 views, 3 comments

    Latest by Owen Thomas: @cdan: Quite the opposite: He no longer belongs to the networks, but still lists the colleges. And I am assured more »

  • facebook

    Sean Parker's illustrious college career

    One of the chief justifications for Facebook's $15 billion valuation is that it traffics in real identities. To prove that you belong to a college or workplace, you must give the social network a matching email address. Unless, that is, you're an early employee and major shareholder. Sean Parker reportedly never even made it to college. But on Facebook, he lives out the fantasy of having simultaneously graduated from Columbia, Sarah Lawrence, Pepperdine, USC, UCLA, UC-Berkeley, New York University, and Stanford. All this in 2002, when he was also working on Plaxo. He's also the member of several regional networks; Facebook allows most users to only join one. So why would Parker, of all people, need so many fake IDs? More »

    Feature

    12:30 PM on Tue Oct 30 2007
    By Owen Thomas
    2,072 views, 2 comments

    Latest by rebump: Nice discovery. more »

  • geeks gone wild

    Facebook cofounder takes his shirt off

    We were wrong about the identity of the Viking-clad Facebook founder living it up on Friday night. It wasn't Sean Parker, who, we hear, is in Spain. (Sorry about that, Sean!) VentureBeat claims it was Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook's VP of engineering and one of the three official Facebook cofounders. The person in question wore a Viking helmet and a fur skirt. Nothing else. (Ed.'s note: Rawr!) Our tipster must have been pretty hammered, because the description supplied — "tall, has dirty blond hair and glasses, and is not particularly attractive" — fails on two out of four counts. Moskovitz has brown hair and is, according to AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, "such a fox." Again, our apologies. But we're glad Moskovitz is taking notes from Parker on how to get down. Update: We now hear Moskovitz was in Palo Alto Friday and Saturday. Can anyone identify that fur-skirted man for us? (Image by VentureBeat)

    12:57 PM on Mon Oct 29 2007
    By Megan McCarthy
    1,990 views, 3 comments

    Latest by Patricia2: @Brochtrup, their calling it the "grotto", or even thinking their lives are anywhere near Hugh Hefner, is kind of like more »

  • geeks gone wild

    Facebook funders party naked

    "One of my roommates tells me this morning that she went to 'the craziest party ever' in Pacific Heights last night," a tipster writes in. "It involved an indoor pool, a lot of champagne, naked people, and someone in a Viking costume who said he was a Facebook founder." Ah, she must be talking about the house owned by Founders Fund partners Ken Howery and Luke Nosek, nicknamed the Grotto. And who was the Hagar the Horrible Facebook Founder? "She's trying to find out his name from other friends who were there, but said he's tall, has dirty blond hair and glasses, and is not particularly attractive." Based on that somewhat unkind description, we'd guess the Viking was Sean Parker. Shame we weren't there to remind people that Parker's not actually a founder of the social network. The party was ostensibly held to toast Microsoft's recent investment into the social network, though we've heard whispers of other reasons behind the celebration. Were you there? Snap any pics? Let us know.

    10:59 AM on Mon Oct 29 2007
    By Megan McCarthy
    9,040 views, 1 comment

    Latest by mandarin: Good naked or bad naked? more »