Valleywag
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Second Life
The new new hype
NICK DOUGLAS — After "radiosurgeon," "robot programmer," and other jobs, "Second Life lawyer" is one of Business 2.0's "new new careers." The occupation's poster boy is Stevan Lieberman, who (according to B2) made $7k in his first two weeks of meeting clients online. Of course, since Second Life only has so many members, this is a "new new career" with a tiny cap on its practitioners. What with this and "Twitter politicians," just thank God no one's written about "MySpace bail-bond firms." -
self-evangelism
How the top self-branders sell themselves
NICK DOUGLAS — It's one thing to be your own #1 fan. But people like bloggers Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and Jason Calacanis are their own worshippers. Guy is such a consummate self-evangelist that he's practically his own pope. Seth's number one product is himself. Jason thinks he's Ari Gold from Entourage. How do they pull this off, and how do some wannabes fail to build their own cults of self? More » -
In Brief
'Terry, we have complete faith in your leadership'
Terry Semel, Yahoo's bruised chief executive, used rather bizarre rhetoric in trumpeting the takeover by the Sunnyvale internet giant of an ad network called Right Media. An open marketplace for banner ads is a "democratic model that empowers advertisers," wrote the former Hollywood studio exec on the Yahoo corporate blog. There was another type of democracy at work in the thread spawned by his post, which read much like Pravda readers praising a Politiburo chief. One of the less effusive comments: "Terry, we have complete faith in your leadership. Please stay at Yahoo at least 5 more years." -
In Brief
Beyond blogs
We wondered, last week, why the blogosphere appeared to be reaching its point of maximum size at about 15 million active blogs. CV said there was a finite number of people who could write interesting tidbits. Toni Schneider, of the Wordpress blog publishing platform, noted that sites which didn't update might still draw meaningful traffic. But here's the strongest explanation, made by Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, among others: personal publishing is still growing, but the fastest growth is occurring on social media properties such as Myspace and Digg; on "directed blogging" sites such as Yelp, the collaborative restaurant review site; and on new publishing platforms such as Twitter, which deliver posts not just to a web page, but to a reader's instant messaging client. Amateur publishers may not be drawing back from the traditional blog but, rather, moving beyond it. -
Spillage
Ask continues its advertising campaign against Google's search monopoly, here, with a poster over a London urinal. "75% of online information goes through one company," the IAC-owned search engine complains. But, for Mountain View's smaller competitors, there's always spillage.
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In Brief
'The only truth in life is love'
David Hayden has had a bad decade. The curly-haired entrepreneur's latest startup, Jeteye, is behind with the rent. He owes his bank over $30m, because he borrowed against the stock, now worthless, of his previous company, Critical Path. He told the New York Times, earlier this month, that he'd been forced to sell off furniture to cover bills. Throughout it all, he's remained curiously serene. How does he do it? Here's a clue, reprinted after the jump, from a post on Hayden's Jeteye page: More » -
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In Brief
Jason Calacanis' next venture
Jason Calacanis, the publishing entrepreneur who sold a group of weblogs to AOL for $25m, has enjoyed sowing confusion about his plans. We've been fooled ourselves. There was the rumor run by Valleywag that the avid podcaster intended to hire Don Imus, another hint that he was drawn to online video. As an entrepreneur-in-action with Sequoia, whatever that term means, the hyper-active exec said he was wading through business plans submitted to the Silicon Valley venture capital firm. He announced a conference joint venture with Michael Arrington of Techcrunch. But several people, in a position to know of his plans, say these schemes are at most hobbies, or pure disinformation; the next venture is a search engine. More » -
Guy Kawasaki
"I love to read what people are saying about me."
NICK DOUGLAS — So says Guy Kawasaki in a video interview (embedded below). The man who marketed the first Mac now markets himself on his blog, which is the only blog he regularly reads. In fact, the only way to get read by Guy is to talk about him: "I do, obviously, have my reader set up to check for instances when [blogs] mention me." The self-evangelist even admits to religiously checking his rank on the blog search site Technorati. "I really care... I don't think it's because I'm insecure, because I'm not insecure." More » -
In Brief
SEC's 'double standard'
You hear from lots of sophisticated investors that it would be terrible if Mr. Jobs were forced out at Apple. How, they say, would that help Apple shareholders? But lots of other chiefs have lost their jobs because of options backdating, and several have even been indicted. However indispensable he may be, the notion that Mr. Jobs can't be touched because he's Steve Jobs is something terribly corrosive. If the S.E.C. is coming to the view that options backdating is just a peccadillo, as Silicon Valley has claimed all along, it should say so. But if it believes this is serious stuff, then it shouldn't be making excuses for Steve Jobs, as it appears to be doing. [From Joe Nocera, who worked on the 2001 Fortune story about the highway robbery of CEO pay, featuring Steve Jobs on the cover. Nocera's Times story requires subscription.]
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In Brief
Dogs at work
Auren Hoffman, the arch-networker, has an interesting tale from Microsoft's Mountain View campus. Photographs of dogs are, he's heard, against company policy, to avoid offending employees. One presumes the software giant is conscious of the feelings of devout Muslims, to whom dogs are unclean. Which raises an interesting question: how do engineers working for Microsoft's corporate neighbor in the Silicon Valley town, Google, get away with bringing their dogs into work? Any experts on corporate mult-culti etiquette, please share in the comments.
San Francisco, 8:58 AM
Sun Nov 23
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