Valleywag

We Read Twitter So Sheryl Sandberg Doesn't Have To
South Park power outage frees workers from Web 2.0
The power is out in South Park, San Francisco's startup epicenter. Wired and Yahoo Brickhouse — in the same building — are affected. Caffe Centro is down. Jack Falstaff isn't answering the phone. Six Apart, a block away on Fourth Street, is up. Workers are roaming the neighborhood. Got any more data points? Send 'em in to tips@valleywag.com.

12:20 PM on Thu Aug 21 2008
By Paul Boutin
580 views, 5 comments

Latest by Troll_2.0: Web 2.0 freedom, but never free from Troll 2.0 more »
twitter
Ex-Twitterer Blaine Cook soon out of Yahoo
Does Twitter miss former architect Blaine Cook, the technician who was simultaneously blamed for the site's outages and hailed for keeping it alive? We're guessing so, if only because Cook's long-haired mug still — still! — gazes from Twitter's jobs page. Cook recently took a job at Yahoo's Brickhouse incubator. He was chummy enough with his coworkers to show up at a going-away party for departing Brickhouse chief Chad Dickerson. But Cook is apparently a short-timer there. A source reports Cook saying he couldn't wait for his contract to expire so he can leave around the end of next month. That's a brief stint, even for Yahoo.

9:40 AM on Tue Aug 12 2008
By Owen Thomas
810 views, 3 comments

Latest by WhatBubble: @Owen Thomas: Nice dodge, amigo, but you miss the point. I'm not suggesting that you should have known it was a more »
caption contest
And in the end the stock you take is equal to the mess you make
How many ex-Yahoo managers does it take to reproduce a classic Beatles album cover? From left to right: Salim Ismail, Chad Dickerson, Scott Gatz, and Bradley Horowitz. All four were, at some point, responsible for parts of Yahoo's advanced-products group, including the Brickhouse incubator in San Francisco. The band reunited last night at the 21st Amendment bar in San Francisco's South of Market district to bid Dickerson farewell; he is leaving Yahoo to become CTO of Etsy, the Brooklyn-based marketplace for hipster-friendly handicrafts one must nod politely about. Ismail is attending to Confabb, the startup he failed to sell before joining Yahoo; Gatz is now running GayCities, a queer-travel website; and Horowitz is now at Google. Can you think of a better caption? Leave it in the comments The winner will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: Naughty Jason L. Baptiste, for "One bubble Pete Cashmore would like to pop."

4:00 PM on Fri Aug 1 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,746 views, 20 comments

Latest by Snorbalp: If the pizza guy would floor it, he could take out that tool doing the robot. more »
valleyspeak
The unhappy death of the Blogger Appeasement Group
In what seems like another age, my predecessor once wrote about companies' "blogger appeasement groups" — units dedicated to generating buzz, not bucks. With Chad Dickerson leaving Yahoo Brickhouse, the troubled company's troubled incubator for new ideas, I think we can declare the delusion of blogger appeasement groups safely over. The self-appointed punditocracy of the blogosphere never was a real customer — nor even a twisted proxy for a real customer. Playing to the echo chamber only generated noise — a specialty of former Brickhouse head Salim Ismail. More »

3:40 PM on Wed Jul 23 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,183 views, Comment
Yahoo Brickhouse head to leave, again Chad Dickerson, who has been responsible for Yahoo's Brickhouse incubator since December, is leaving the company to be CTO at Etsy, an online handicrafts retailer. We hear Google, where former boss Bradley Horowitz now works, had been heavily recruiting Dickerson. With this move, Dickerson has deftly dissed both Web giants. Well done, Chad! [TechCrunch]

Comment
slingshot labs
MySpace incubator succeeds at reeling in wayward employee
Little has been heard from Slingshot Labs, the startup "incubator" News Corp. formed in February, in the months since its creation. The $15 million fund for spinoff ventures did succeed in keeping MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe in place: We hear that he made it a quid pro quo before signing a new, lucrative contract with Rupert Murdoch. He's not the only MySpace employee Slingshot played a part in keeping down in Los Angeles. We hear Nick Granado, a top engineer behind MySpace's iPhone version, first flirted with a job at Facebook, then worked briefly at Imeem, before getting lured back with a gig at Slingshot. More »

9:40 AM on Fri Jul 18 2008
By Owen Thomas
879 views, Comment

blaine cook
Yahoo hires controversial Twitter architect for troubled project
Whatever side you're on, everyone agrees that Twitter's problems with downtime come down to one man: Blaine Cook. Cook's advocates claim he was hobbled from fixing the site by incompetent managers; Cook's detractors say his decisions as Twitter's chief architect led to its frequent outages. We'd heard he left Twitter with plans to relocate to the U.K. Instead, we've learned, he took a job at Yahoo's Brickhouse, the troubled San Francisco office meant to incubate new projects. He's believed to be working for Chad Dickerson, who recently listed a position for a software engineer experienced in the Ruby programming language — one of Cook's specialties. More »

1:40 PM on Wed Jul 16 2008
By Owen Thomas
2,072 views, 9 comments

Latest by BobDope: Brickhouse cuts itself just so it will feel something, that kind of thing. more »
"Okay, you win. Best two out of three? C'mon, bring it!" TechConfidential's Joshua Jaffe intensely awaits a serve at Yahoo's Brickhouse party for Web 2.0 last night. Suggest your own in the comments. Yesterday's winner: BartKela. (Photo by Brian Solis)

2 comments
real estate
Yahoo Brickhouse office closing?
Is Yahoo shopping the 14,000-sq. ft. space where its Brickhouse incubator sits? Several prospective renters came through on a recent weekend with the building's property manager, a tipster tells Valleywag. With offices now vacant in Sunnyvale, paying for Brickhouse's San Francisco lease surely seems like an unneeded frill. (Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

7:37 AM on Mon Feb 18 2008
By Owen Thomas
2,401 views, 7 comments

Latest by abmw: I pitched six time sat Yahoo to 12 different groups of folks who only texted and played with computers and more »
careers
Tap your right foot if you want to leave Yahoo
To find Yahoos ready to bolt, recruiters are taking a wide stance. Cake Financial, a startup, occupies the same building in SoMa as Yahoo's San Francisco incubator, Brickhouse. Employees at Cake plastered Yahoo's entrance and building restrooms with fliers, snaps of which we received from a tipster in the building. Wired confirms that, unlike electronic attempts to hunt down restless Yahoos with targeted ads, the restroom campaign has borne fruit in the form of actual résumés. The flier: More »

4:40 PM on Thu Feb 14 2008
By Owen Thomas
3,552 views, 3 comments

Latest by techguy_03: That is funny... more »

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