Valleywag
great moments in pr
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Silicon Alley Insider
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great moments in pr
New Silicon Alley Reporter accuses "lovable scumbag" Jason Calacanis of spreading "baseless rumors"
Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis made his name running Silicon Alley Reporter back in the 1990s. You'd think Calacanis would be happy to hear that some guy named Gary Sharma has brought the Silicon Alley Report back to the Web. Nope. On his last trip to New York, Calacanis gleefully told a table full of reporters that Dow Jones, which bought the publication from Calacanis back in 2003 — was preparing to sue Sharma's project out of existence. Sharma denies the legal trouble. "Word on the street is that these are just baseless rumors being spread around by that lovable scumbag Jason Calacanis," Sharma tells us. "Maybe he's getting a lil antsy now that SAR 2.0 is getting rave reviews from the Silicon Alley community?" Asked to comment, Peter Kafka, managing editor of Silicon Alley Insider, a blog often confused with Calacanis's old rag, said: "Who?"
rumormonger
Calacanis's latest blog blather: Silicon Alley Insider raised $12 million
At his Dim Sum 2.0 dinner in New York last night, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis congratulated Silicon Alley Insider blogger Dan Frommer on his boss's fundraising abilities. Calacanis said he'd heard Blodget raised $12 million for the New York tech blog. Frommer asked Calacanis if he meant $3 million to $5 million, as TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington reported yesterday. No, Calacanis said, he'd heard $12 million from one of the investors. More »
blogging for dollars
Valleywag seeking $10 million among VC blog feeding frenzy
What is Michael Arrington smoking? His self-indulgent fantasy: All the bloggers should band together into a "dream team," owning equity in the joint venture. "Someone needs to pony up a big round of financing around an existing blog, or perhaps a new entity, and then start rolling them up into a big fat CNET crushing $200 million/year in revenue business," he writes. That existing blog he has in mind is obviously TechCrunch, though he never comes out and says it. What pushed him into this delusion? A rumor that Silicon Alley Insider is raising a $3 million to $5 million round and that PaidContent is also seeking more financing, a charge founder Rafat Ali doesn't exactly deny. Arrington doesn't want his competitors to raise money, because that will screw his ambitions for a big blog rollup. More »
nerdfight
Blodget to Spitzer: Payback's a bitch!
Back in 2002, Eliot Spitzer, then New York's attorney general, published internal emails from Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget . Blodget was shown trashing stocks he had publicly touted. The SEC charged Blodget with fraud and eventually banned him from the securities industry for life. Now Blodget edits Silicon Alley Insider. Look who's publishing now.
google
New York reporters scooped on YouTube by blabbing blogger
Google hosted an event in Manhattan yesterday to pitch advertisers on YouTube. Silicon Alley Insider's Michael Learmonth tried to crash and got booted. The New York Times's Louise Story played nice and apparently got to stay, but later told readers the "bulk of the event" was "off the record." Apparently, neither tried Google search. Attendee Ian Schafer, CEO of a digital marketing agency, was happy to blog everything. More »
silicon alley insider
John Battelle welcomes Henry Blodget into snuggly embrace
Henry Blodget, editor of Silicon Alley Insider, has established himself as a connoisseur of male beauty. And John Battelle is a handsome man. He's also chairman of Federated Media, the online-ad network and paid friend to bloggers, which is more likely where the attraction lies. Blodget has publicly documented on his New York-based tech blog his struggles to find an ad model that works. At last, he has: Toss his banners in Battelle's lap. More »
caption contest
Blogger realizes "Attack of the Show" not radio program
Dan Frommer, a reporter for Silicon Alley Insider, makes his father proud with a turn as a talking head on G4 TV. New to our caption contests? The rules are simple: The best caption you submit in the comments becomes the new headline. Commenter kamra is the current winner. Can you top "Bloggers realizes "Attack of the Show' not radio program"? Photo by Michael Frommer, Dan's dad)
nerdfight
Slide's funding brings out reporters' knives
Scoops are important to journalists. But do readers care? Some writers persist in thinking so. I can't remember ever seeing such backbiting over a humdrum funding announcement: Kara Swisher of AllThingsD scooped everyone last Friday with a rumor that Slide, Max Levchin's Web widget maker, was raising a big funding round. Sarah Lacy of BusinessWeek had more details of the $50 million round in an already-written column published to the Web after Swisher's post. Brad Stone of the New York Times weighed in that afternoon. And that's when the knives came out. More »
scams
How to get real Google bucks from fake press releases
Phony press releases have become the grist for the newest Internet profit mills. If you're like Chris Anderson and us, you don't read press releases. But several tech blogs were taken in by a dubious press release issued by a nonexistent company allegedly backed by real investors who may or may not have invested in several fake companies. Huh? Exactly. How the scam was uncovered, how it works, and how to avoid falling victim after the jump. More »
henry blodget
Disclaimer of the week
In a post on Silicon Alley Insider about Gilt Groupe, a website which runs private couture sales for an invite-only clientele, disgraced stock analyst Henry Blodget includes the following disclaimer:Disclosure: Yes, yes, we know, we're conflicted up the wazoo here. Gilt's chairman Kevin Ryan is our chairman, Alexis Maybank, Mike Bryzek, and co are basically colleagues, etc. Whatever. You want pure objectivity without a hint of favoritism, emotion, or relationship conflict, visit TechCrunch.He forgot one other disclaimer: Gilt Groupe CEO Alexis Maybank is a certified Silicon Alley fox. But far classier for Blodget to suggest he's swayed by the bonds of collegiality.
silicon alley insider
Peter Kafka needs to get out more
For the record, j'adore le Peter Kafka, managing editor of Silicon Alley Insider, the New York-based tech blog from disgraced stock analyst Henry Blodget. But seriously, girlfriend needs to loosen up. First of all, last time I was in town, the former Forbes writer totally ditched a little cocktail hour I threw in an East Village bar. Now, he freely admits to missing out the drunken, gossip-laden "debauchery" at a party thrown by TiVo and RealNetworks. I wasn't even there, and I got a story out of the party. I hear Blodget is a taskmaster. Hank, baby, for your readers' sakes: Let this guy roll into the office a little later. (Photo of Kafka by Glen Davis)
Silicon Alley Insider ventures into the vaguely icky territory of sponsored-post advertising. It's one thing to thank one's sponsors by name, as is Valleywag's practice. Quite another to pen a gushing blog infomercial, in this case for a service called Vintage Filings, that looks like regular content. Surely Henry Blodget doesn't need the money badly enough to risk adding "disgraced tech blogger" to his list of unseemly epithets. [Innonate]
Update: Henry Blodget responds.
blogging for dollars
Henry Blodget keeps teasing his critics
I noted yesterday how stock analyst turned blogger Henry Blodget was deftly yanking the chains of tech bloggers everywhere by merely asking, playfully, whether TechCrunch might be worth $100 million. Asking, mind you — he never once, in his original post, suggested he actually thought it was worth that much. In a followup post that's sure to engender more misplaced outrage, Blodget dives deeper into the numbers and suggests that yes, maybe some day in the future — by no means today — TechCrunch could, conceivably be worth $100 million. Conceivably. In the future. Then again, he's functioning under the delusion that the TechCrunch40 conference was a "major hit" instead of a rolling disaster, so who knows? On that line, at least, one hopes he was kidding, yet again. (Photo by Getty Images)
crash this bash
Party at the New York City Googleplex!
We're getting live reports on who's making it past the velvet rope at Google's New York party. The bash, held in Google's West Chelsea offices at 76 Ninth Avenue, has already kicked up a fuss. Google's controlling-but-not-that-bright PR people have tried to limit the guest list to consumer and fashion reporters, figuring they'd be more likely to critique the buffet and less likely to ask pesky questions about the search engine's business practices. So far, they've had mixed results. Here's who we've heard has showed up so far — and who's been barred at the door. More »
silicon alley insider
Absurd assumptions about the iPhone
Dan Frommer of the Silicon Alley Insider sees the world as flat and static — at least when it comes to Apple's iPhone. Two days ago, he estimated that the iPhone wasn't meeting Apple's expectations based on the absurd assumption of flat sales — despite the obvious fact that sales will not be consistent over the time period analyzed. Between now and the end of 2008, Apple will experience two holiday shopping seasons when they have historically experienced huge surges in sales. Apple will also enter at least two new markets, Europe and Asia. And while a 3G version of the iPhone is unlikely to arrive in the US before the holidays, an upgrade of some kind is certain in the next 15 months... as are additional price cuts. All of which will produce sales increases and likely fuel further upward momentum to Apple's pricey phone. Not content with poor analysis of unit sales, Frommer is now extending his simplistic assumptions to iPhone profits. More »
web 2.0
Bruce Judson puts the "bull" in "bully pulpit"
Bruce Judson, the Internet pioneer, is taking a turn at pretending to be a Web 2.0 expert, blogging on Henry Blodget's Silicon Alley Insider. Yes, the very same Bruce Judson, Time Warner Internet vet turned hawker of free crap we wrote about a week ago, who's pawning his reputation as a marketer and business leader from the first Web boom to pitch his new venture, Free for Today. Why, oh, why, is Blodget handing Judson a megaphone? The fallen star's ruminations on Web 2.0 are obvious and boring, and a thinly veiled pitch for his free-crap website. Ah, yes, this is the real Web 2.0: Garnering attention through self-promotion, no matter how spurious your ideas or transparent your motives. Maybe Judson gets it after all.
great moments in pr
