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valleyspeak
valleyspeak
"Vesting in peace"
Connected Ventures cofounder Zach Klein — the guy who spread a rumor that the Mormons were trying to buy Facebook — continues his stay in San Francisco. The latest phrase he's learned from the natives: "vesting in peace." More »
More Yahoo layoffs coming
Yahoo's Aikido and Judo projects, briefly mentioned in a New York Times story, "are, in fact, yet another round of navel-gazing strategy overview efforts," Kara Swisher reports. Translation: more layoffs to come. [BoomTown]
Yahoo's Aikido and Judo projects, briefly mentioned in a New York Times story, "are, in fact, yet another round of navel-gazing strategy overview efforts," Kara Swisher reports. Translation: more layoffs to come. [BoomTown]
valleyspeak
"Nonguaranteed"
When she's not boring shareholders silly, Yahoo president Sue Decker has been trying to beguile advertisers to buy a new form of online advertising: "nonguaranteed" ads. Her campaign started in earnest at an Internet Advertising Bureau conference in February; it continued in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Strip aside the technical mumbo-jumbo, and you learn this: "Guaranteed" ads run at specified times, on specified websites. "Nonguaranteed" ads run wherever, whenever, at Yahoo's discretion. More »
the chart
The 250 shows supercharged viral growth, more than tripling to 806 in four months
Back in March, very special correspondent Paul Boutin revealed that the Olds were derisively referring to the insular San Francisco clique of Web hipsters — the sort of people who Twitter about how they wish FriendFeed had a better Plurk API — as "the 250." After learning that 806 people tuned in to watch Kevin Rose shave his head, live on the Internet, we are now revising that figure upwards by a factor of 3.224. With Rose's market-expanding efforts, we now have three times as many people to mock. Thanks, Kevin!
valleyspeak
Not long ago, an "unpublished" work was one that had never been published. Boing Boing comments moderator Teresa Nielsen Hayden unintentionally popularized a new meaning of the word when she used it to describe posts the Boingers had erased from their site: "We unpublished our own work. There's a big difference between that and censorship." Now, Google's Wikipedia competitor Knol has completely broken the word's meaning. "The requested biographical knol has been unpublished by the author." Doesn't that sound like I wrote and then deleted my bio, rather than that I've yet to write it? Don't go hunting through Google's cache for it — you'll be sadly un-successful.
Unpublished
Not long ago, an "unpublished" work was one that had never been published. Boing Boing comments moderator Teresa Nielsen Hayden unintentionally popularized a new meaning of the word when she used it to describe posts the Boingers had erased from their site: "We unpublished our own work. There's a big difference between that and censorship." Now, Google's Wikipedia competitor Knol has completely broken the word's meaning. "The requested biographical knol has been unpublished by the author." Doesn't that sound like I wrote and then deleted my bio, rather than that I've yet to write it? Don't go hunting through Google's cache for it — you'll be sadly un-successful.
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
1,179 views,
Comment
valleyspeak
Merriam-Webster's new dictionary words for 2008
Last year, the lexicographers at dictionary maker Merriam-Webster proclaimed w00t its Word of the Year. For 2008, they've added fanboy, webinar, netroots, and pretexting to the lexicon. Who cares? I do, because I find Merriam's online dictionary, more consistent, more focused, and better written than its wikified open dictionary or the Google results for define:pretexting. There'll be 100 or so new words in the Merriam-Webster's 2008 edition, due September 1. Meanwhile, I called the company and got the 25 most populist of the new entries as a teaser: More »
valleyspeak
At long last, Yahoo reorg to put employees out of their misery
Yahoo is about to perform that dreaded big-tech-company maneuver, the "reorg." For you young-uns who don't get why reorg is such a scary word: Think massive layoffs, lost mortgages, and people like your parents with no back-to-school money for brats like you. Multiply by 10,000-plus. I can only wish a soft landing for the folks who designed, built and shipped Yahoo's new search engine interface, and the marketers who dreamed up those radio ads that got me to — I can't believe I'm admitting this on a blog — actually use Yahoo to find stuff. More »
Valleyspeak
Seesmic launch illustrates how Metcalfe's Law and Dunbar's Number correlate
Some of the most pervasive buzzwords in the Valley are terms to classify product or idea adoption, such as "early adopter," which serves to define a behavior profile of a customer or user who's always trying the newest new thing. As a product's appeal widens, it begins to attract the "early mainstream," or the network of acquaintances inspired by the early adopter to try the not newest but still new thing. Now that Seesmic has launched publicly and gotten a vag-tastic kickoff, the early mainstream has started to participate, as exemplified by the drunk cry for help (or a mockery thereof) above, which is much more typical of YouTube than the community fostered on Seesmic while the site was still only adding users by invitation — this earnest response is more typical of Seesmic's early adopters. Which means we need to update another hoary Valley cliche, Metcalfe's Law. More »
5:00 PM on Wed Jun 18 2008
By Jackson West
559 views,
8 comments
Latest by Shadowlayer: So according to Metcalfe FB is now worth $3600000000000000? Riiiiiight... more »
