Gawker
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blog wars
Getty Heir Giving Up on Feud Already!
The costume-wearing heir to the Getty oil fortune is back with a new entry on the "What's it like to be rich?" blog! Did Peter Getty bring the funk right to our face?? (No). Click through to find out! More » -
feuds
Rich Getty Heir Wants Blog Fight!
Earlier this week we expressed dismay that wealthy San Franciscan heirs Peter and Billy Getty had decided to write an infuriating blog about: "What's it like to be rich?" And now, thanks be to god, Peter Getty wants to feud! More »
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Comment by hypocriteoath: You see... PG thought he was being funny in his first post and that people would just laugh at it... 5 Responses | Other threads
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mediaite
Unlaunched Media Blog Has Facebook Sibling Intern. (Plus: A Preview!)
An addition to the Celebrity Media Intern Class of '09: Arielle Zuckerberg, the kid sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. She's indentured herself to Dan Abrams-affiliated media blog Mediaite.com. It hasn't launched yet, but we have an exclusive preview! More » -
great moments in pr
Tesla Flack Bitches About 'Silicon Valley Gossip Blog'
Tesla Motors, once Silicon Valley's hottest electric-car startup, has a host of real problems, like a shortage of cash and a paranoid CEO. How is its top flack spending her time? Taking "umbrage" with bloggers! More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Pope John Peeps II: Hi, Lee. I'm not sure how much you know about the various publications that you link to, but I really... 4 Responses | Other threads
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gavin newsom
San Francisco Mayor Acknowledges Bloggers' Existence
Gavin Newsom, the shiny-haired mayor of San Francisco who's running for governor of California, told Bill Maher Friday night that things won't be that bad if newspapers die. We'll still have blogs! More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Almostbanned: I watched that clip hoping that an asteroid would suddenly crash through the roof of the studio and consume Newsom... 3 Responses | Other threads
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tumblr
New Tumblr Stumble Renews Censorship Scandal
There's an old saying: Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. The latest exemplar: Tumblr CEO David Karp, who keeps getting charged with squelching his users' freedom of speech. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by BrianVan: So, if one person writes in and says that David Karp did something to him, you'll publish it and make... 6 Responses | Other threads
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journalismism
Bloggers Scoop CNBC Again at Apple Shareholder Meeting
Poor Jim Goldman! The CNBC reporter keeps coming up empty-handed on Apple scoops. His latest complaint: Apple didn't let him bring a laptop or BlackBerry into its annual shareholder meeting. Bloggers liveblogged it anyway! More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by boyonabike: That last line was quite the zinger, Giz. 1 Responses | Other threads
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bloggers
White House Liveblogging Could Destroy Blogging Forever
Oh, dear god: The Obama White House is liveblogging itself. What's the point of liveblogging this stuff ourselves when we can just read this stuff in our pajamas? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by GORDONGARTRELLE: This is like the day Borges met Escher and the world ended. It was emosewa. 1 Responses | Other threads
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field guide
David Karp
This kid, David Karp, the Tumblr founder—he's now a confirmed (notional) multimillionaire! That means it's time for a field guide, in case you need to hit him up for money soon. Which you will. More »
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Comment by BadUncle: He does have pretty eyes, which I hope to wear around my neck on a chain of keepsakes after the... 6 Responses | Other threads
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nate silver
How Nate Silver Can Rule The World
The world belongs to Nate Silver! Briefly. Silver, the number-crunching baseball stat geek who decided to become a political poll-cruncher in his spare time and only turned out to be the most freakishly accurate election predictor ever, is now the toast of the media, Obamaphiles, and stat nerds alike. The Times has even weighed in now, several months behind the curve! Now is your chance to capitalize, Nate; screw this up and you'll soon return to the depths of nerd-only notoriety. After the jump, our professional advice to Nate about building his entire future in five easy steps—five being a number that statistics show gets a lot of page views!: More »
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Comment by Aaron Altman: That Inseam Just Screams "You're In My House Now" 7 Responses | Other threads
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ijustine
Pretty Girls Becoming Popular Online: What Does It Mean?
Justine Ezarik is a pretty blond girl who calls herself "iJustine" and gets hundreds of thousands of hits on her YouTube videos of her doing completely irrelevant bullshit like shopping or telling boring stories to the camera, because of the fact that young men will generally watch pretty blond girls do anything, which then makes said girl popular, which then attracts young female viewers, who will watch popular girls do anything. Mindless lemmings drawn to reflections of our own vapid selves, we all are. For a more thoughtful exploration of this issue, let's see what former Gawker ed. Emily Gould has to say: More »
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Comment by ChicagoZ: Can I have that 1:30 of my life back? Please? Do yourself a favor and skip watching that video. 7 Responses | Other threads
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bloggers
Linus Torvalds blogs about nerding out, kids, and America
Maybe you didn't exactly invent an operating system. But other than that, Linus Torvalds is just like you! The open-source movement's favorite Finn has gotten into the blogging game, just like every other Tom, Dick, and Sergey. Unlike the Google founder, whose site blatantly promotes 23andMe, his wife Anne Wojcicki's gene-testing startup, Torvalds just wants to share news and pictures of his family. On the blog, he geeks out over Intel flash-memory disks and even shares a custom script to limit Internet usage for his kids. But like any good long-term resident alien with a green card, Torvalds laments the most about American politics, pointing out the fundamental problem with voting: More »
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Comment by Patricia2: Is that the Tasmanian devil on someone's shirt? seriously? 6 Responses | Other threads
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i hate it here
What tech pundits talk about when they're not talking tech
Tired of hearing tech bloggers opine authoritatively about politics, a subject they know nothing about but nevertheless retain strongly held views? That was so September 2008. Welcome to the next blogosphere megatrend: Tech bloggers opining authoritatively about the economy.
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By Owen ThomasComment by fakemichaelarrington: Oh. I thought you would just have the word "nothing" under the title. more » | Other threads
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lists
The Scoble 165 — you're not on it
If you follow Robert Scoble at all — and you sort of have to unless your DSL is dead — you know he can't help overproliferating everything he does. While the entire staff of Vanity Fair takes months to assemble its 100 most powerful list, Fast Company's token webhead spews 165 names in one pass for his "hand-picked list of the people who provide the most interesting tech blogging/tweeting/FriendFeeding." Robert, let me put on my old Condé Nast editor's hat and redline this back to you: GREAT START, BUT PLS TELL US WHO THE FK THS PPL ARE: More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by Scobleizer: I'm slowly updating the list with a bit about each person. 2 Responses | Other threads
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bloggers
Tumblr users need to grow a pair, not whine to David Karp
It's so familiar a tale: An online community, once obsequiously friendly, turns nasty as it gets bigger. But the loss of innocence is hitting users of blogging service Tumblr especially hard. Perhaps it's because the audience, once limited to young New York hipsters in the social circle of founder David Karp. The latest cri de coeur comes from Silicon Alley Insider's Eric Krangel, who complains that Karp hasn't done enough to stem the tide of "anonybloggers" who "follow" users on the site in order to mock them. "Following" sounds a bit creepy, unless you know that its Tumblr slang for 'reading." Where's the button for banning anyone who deviates from the party line, users have started to whine. Would it be too much to ask Tumblr's fragile millennials to grow up instead? More »
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By Jackson WestComment by raincoaster: They scale fine as long as people get over themselves. If they expect to use the most powerful communication tool... 1 Responses | Other threads
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biotech
How Sergey Brin can avoid Parkinson's Disease
Google cofounder Sergey Brin has popped his blogging cherry, using his first post as an excuse to promote his wife Anne Wojcicki's personal genetic testing company 23andMe. Turns out Brin has a genetic mutation likely inherited from his mother that indicates a higher risk for Parkinson's Disease — a debilitating condition that affects movement, resulting in tremors and eventual paralysis. Which would certainly be a terrible fate for a gymnast who loves kite-surfing. Brin has "decades to prepare for it," though. My suggestion? More »
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By Jackson WestComment by blahblob: I have a hard time believing that too.blogspot.com has been available for all these years, I suspect Sergey used some... 1 Responses | Other threads
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andrew breitbart
Andrew Breitbart: Drudge's Human Face
Finally, a place where Hollywood conservatives can have their say. Andrew Breitbart, the friendly half of the Drudge Report link machine, is about to launch what we can only describe as "Sort of the conservative mirror of the original idea for Huffington Post, the one what was quickly abandoned." His new venture will supposedly become a destination site for Hollywood conservatives (like Jean-Claude Van Damme!) to speak out, and have their musing published on the World Wide Web. And, you know, good luck with that. But why does anybody care? Who is this awesomely powerful (but liked!) online agenda-setter? More »
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Comment by Nic Fit: I went to high school with this dipshit. He was something of a bully back then, so he's a perfect... 3 Responses | Other threads
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politics
McCain campaign blogger retracts Dungeons & Dragons crack
Michael Goldfarb, one of the propagandists working for John McCain's presidential campaign, has discovered an unknown third rail of politics: Dungeons & Dragons. Attacking critics who suggested McCain plagiarized a touching anecdote about his observation of faith in prison from Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Goldfarb suggested, "It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement." More »
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By Jackson WestComment by Mouser_UK: hmm So whers the stats for the Hocky Mom Character class more » | Other threads
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Tucker Max
Tucker Max, Businessman
Tucker Max: blogger of beer and sluts, writer and producer of one of the least funny comedy movie scripts since Illegally Yours, and asshole in a dozen different ways. The most ridiculous of which is as the boss of his own mini-empire of blogs! And since last week, we've heard from several of his former Rudius Media employees, who expound on the gentle pleasures of working for one of America's foremost purveyors of racist poop jokes:
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Comment by Puns-n-Roses: @LadlySack: Actually, in a lot of mythology, the devil does have two penises. more » | Other threads
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Tucker Max
Tucker Max's Movie Script
Yesterday we put out a call for the viciously panned script of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, the upcoming film written by I-totally-fucked-that-chick blogger Tucker Max. We immediately received about a dozen copies of the script, which is apparently being forwarded around Hollywood like a list of bad lawyer jokes. I also could have said "like herpes," and I could also follow up by joking that the script is about as funny as a bad lawyer with herpes, haha. Friends, it opens with Tucker Max fucking a deaf girl and screaming "DON'T TAZE ME, BRO!." It is that bad. After the jump, three of the most terrible moments from the film's first half. Jesus, bro:
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Comment by BunnyLebowski: She tries not to vomit in her mouth while reading this, but can't help herself. 1 Responses | Other threads
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rant
Volunteer Bloggers: Stop Subsidizing the Entire Internet
This is getting ridiculous. Today, Alley Insider reported that some bloggers at AOL have chosen to keep posting for free after cutbacks that would only pay them for five posts per day. It's assumed that at least some people are indeed donating some of their blog posts. And don't even get me started on the Huffington Post, that repository of crackpot rants built by an army of many free-bloggers writing in the name of "exposure." (CEO Betsey Morgan said in a recent interview that paying the HuffPo's bloggers might possibly be part of the picture someday; in the meantime, "It feels very 1993 to say, ‘Hey, it’s all about the check that I get at the end of the month.’") After the jump: Econ 2.0, or why bloggers should stop writing for free.
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By SheilaComment by Katee Giffen: Did it ever occur to you that some people blog because it is enjoyable to them? Duh. more » | Other threads
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100-word version
Why tech blogging sucks
We rarely miss a chance to pick on relentless egoblogger Robert Scoble. But today, RoboScoble is hurting, and his hurt hurts like our hurt. Only his hurt runs about 2,000 words longer. How has tech blogging failed Robert since the halcyon days of 2003? Here's the executive briefing: More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by TechMeister: That's the funniest, saddest picture I've seen in a while... LOL... more » | Other threads
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drama
Commenters Take Over Internet, Run Bloggers Out on Rails
Internet person Rex Sorgatz put the pieces together—the New York story on the mean Brownstoner commenter, the Times story on commenters running the asylums, and finally last week's Time piece that was kinda-sorta in defense of anonymous nastiness. Commenters are a trend! Everyone is basically terrified of them! And this weekend, former blog entrepreneur Jason Calacanis up and quit the internet. Or, at least, he quit blogging. And started a private email list! Which is basically the definitive proof that the War is Over and the Commenters Won. More » -
feuds
Blogfights: A 100-word history
Nearly ten years before Violet Blue vs. Boing Boing, the Internet's early bloggers discovered their new medium's killer application: Personal spats. Radar Online blogger Choire Sicha, angling for his 14th return to us here at Gawker Media, recounts blogfeuding's past. Choire: tl; dr. Only one era bears recounting: the months after 9/11. More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by raincoaster: Choire can do much better than that; it read like a topic forced on him. more » | Other threads
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doc searls
Blogging mentor Doc Searls in a world of hurt
Sixty-year-old David "Doc" Searls, a ramblingly lucid blogger who has mentored many a protégé, is recovering very slowly in a hospital near Harvard University. Doc has spent the week suffering a series of increasingly outlandish medical malfunctions that would make for a classic Doc Searls blog post if they weren't so lethal. Searls, a Santa Barbara resident who currently holds a Harvard fellowship, scared the bejeezus out of friends and followers this week by detailing his increasingly preposterous illnesses on his blog and on Twitter. As conferencegoers frantically tried to figure it all out by reading his posts in reverse, Valleywag phoned Doc in his hospital room to get the 100-word version. More » -
media bloggers association
Don't Mess With the Media Bloggers Association
The Associated Press wants us bloggers to purchase a license from them for permission to quote 5 words from their stories. Ok guys, good luck with that. Recently they threatened some D-list bloggers in order to put the fear of god into everyone, but it backfired, naturally. So they're trying the good cop approach—they will not sue bloggers, they promise, and they will meet with some blogger advocacy group to hammer out an agreement. These new guidelines will be drawn up in consultation with something called the Media Bloggers Association, a.k.a. The Justice Blogiety of America, a.k.a. the Congress of Blogustrial Organizations. It's a powerless group of funny-looking nerds with no ties to mainstream "blogging" as we know it. Amusingly, after Night Editor Ryan Tate made fun of them last night, they sent him a wounded email asking why he didn't call them for comment first. OMG guys, you represent bloggers? Don't you know we never pick up phones? That email is attached, and more fun with the M.B.A. is below.
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bloggers
Tumblr: the documentary
Who uses David Karp's microblogging site Tumblr? To us, they are trustafarians and their hangers-on — men with beards and thick glasses, girls with rainbow leggings and bangs. They are Sanfrooklyn's creative types and those who dress like them. Or — according to David Seger's Tumblr: the documentary, embedded below — they are "the dumbest babies of them all." We take exception to this as a Tumblista ourself, though we can't deny a sad correlation between our self-worth and the number of those who follow us. More »
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Comment by Peteski: Follow me to the bank 'cause daddy has just wired me the rent money. more » | Other threads
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bloggers
Vanity Fair displays new media acumen with "Blogopticon"
In a wonderful piece of linkbait, Vanity Fair produced an illustration featuring a number of popular "blogs" arranged in a cartesian graph from "Scurrolous" to "Earnest" on one axis and "Opinion" to "News" on another. While we're trying to grasp how the 'Wag ended up on the earnest side of the scale, more confusing is the inclusion of Salon and Slate. Apparently, if you're not printed on paper, you're a "blog" — even though both publications predate the term. But where the chart really gets things wrong is in using the disembodied head of Amanda Congdon to illustrate online video program Rocketboom. If the authors or illustrator actually watched the show or read many of the listed blogs, they'd know that Joanne Colan took over as host after a very nasty and public departure from the show by Congdon. Keep trying, guys, you're bound to figure out this Internet thing eventually!
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By Jackson WestComment by deathbychichi: You guys ought to at least be on the "scurrilous" side of the vertical axis. Jeez. more » | Other threads
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Blogging for Pink Collars
Caterina Fake crashes ladyblogs' "digital slumber party"
Women do rule the web, Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake told the New York Times, but with a "crushing sameness." Loads of blogs aimed at the moneyed portion of the lady demographic are launching, including Jezebel (published, like Valleywag, by Gawker Media) — ostensibly part of the "sameness" Fake alludes to. A BlogHer study even deems blogging now mainstream among women. Fake is not swayed: More »
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Comment by raincoaster: And if it doesn't have ads for Blooming Teas or quilting grrrrl circles in the sidebar, everybody assumes you're a... more » | Other threads
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blogging for dollars
Bombay Sapphire discovers spirit of exploitation
In their endless quest for authenticity, marketers have latched onto bloggers as their new spokespeople. They're less demanding than celebrities, and far cheaper than copywriters. In this spirit, Bombay Sapphire, a brand of Bacardi Limited, which sold $5 billion worth of booze last year, has recruited bloggers for its Spirit of Exploration website. In exchange for writing paeans about exploration, Bacardi is allowing them to enter a contest, and linking to their blogs. At least Federated Media, the ad network, sold out its bloggers' credibility in exchange for a large Microsoft advertising buy; Bombay Sapphire's ad agency has cut out the middleman and persuaded bloggers to whore themselves out for free. Impressive!
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By Owen ThomasComment by MarkSLindsey: As one of the blogger/flacks(formerly) behind this promo, that team deserves hard-earned credit for pulling this off with tangible results. more » | Other threads
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great moments in pr
Renee Blodgett brings oversharing to the world of tech PR
We live in an overfamiliar age. Why should our flacks be any different? Even so, Startup-PR consultant Renee Blodgett has raised the bar for the rest of her industry. Blodgett, PBS informs us, "is one of the PR folks who understands how to communicate with bloggers." A blogger who forwarded me an email from Blodgett begs to differ. Blodgett and said Web scribe have never met, and yet Blodgett feels perfectly comfortable proposing "social" time, planning a "small group dinner," and asking for hotel recommendations. All this with four smileys thrown in for good measure. The email: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by OprahCeisus: Valleywag Brings A Yawning Nothingness to the World of Tech Gossip I have seen and spoken with Renee at tech events... more » | Other threads
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tumblr
Would you pay $999 for a customized Tumblr? Trustafarian bloggers will!
A couple weeks ago, when we showed you how to redesign your Tumblr for free, we mentioned that a company called Tumblize plan to charge $499 for the very same service. We were wrong. Andrew Wilkinson's Tumblize, launched today, will design you a customized Tumblr for "just $999." Startled by that kind of nonironic usage of the word just? Don't be. If Tumblr's blogging hordes have taught us anything, it's that earnest is the new ironic. Besides, Tumblize already has customers offering testimonials. Simon Frankson extols:Tumblize actualized my crazy vision in ways I didn't think the internet even allowed for. They're poet/designers making haiku websites out of dreams.
Below, view a screenshot of Frankson's Tumblr and $3,996 more worth of goods. More » -
book deals
Three Steps To Getting A Book Deal For Your Blog
If everyone's getting a book deal for their blog, why aren't you? Mostly because your writing hasn't gone anywhere better than a Gawker comment thread, but also because you haven't followed these three steps (note: not a joke article! Real advice inside) to getting a blog book deal. Short version: Start a blog that's short and sweet and high-concept, spread it on Tumblr and LiveJournal, send it to Gawker, and call Kate Lee.
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By Nick DouglasComment by random_play: Don't forget lying. Also lying. And if that doesn't work you should definitely try lying. Truth is the new fiction! more » | Other threads
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jackpot
John Battelle takes $22 million in fuck-you money
Anyone telling you that Federated Media, the online ad network which reps Boing Boing, GigaOm, TechCrunch and other blogs, has raised $50 million from investors is dead wrong. It's true, Oak Investment Partners and others paid $50 million for shares of Federated. But only half of that went to the company, we're told; the rest went to founder John Battelle and other employees. According to our source, Battelle's take was roughly 90 percent of the insider shares sold, or about $22 million. More » -
astroturf
Fake Bloggers, Go Directly To Jail!
Wow! As a nerd on the PR and marketing beat I find this to be absolutely astounding and heartening: the UK is about to make it a crime for companies to misrepresent themselves as consumers in their online marketing. That means, for example, that a company setting up a fake blog to hype its own products could be prosecuted, fined, and jailed. Free speech? Whatever. This is an awesome development. And bloggers can be locked up, too! More »
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Comment by Mouser_UK: Hmm But tabloid reporters and editors can hire dodgy PIs (HINT Ex cops who took medical retirement HINT HINT) the tabs have... more » | Other threads
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automattic
Matt Mullenweg charms pants off Kara Swisher, copies my hairdo
AllThingsD's Kara Swisher admits her bias in interviewing Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg: Not only does her site use his blogging software, but she admits to having a "personal mancrush" on the programmer. He is perhaps the first straight guy to receive such treatment from Swisher, who is, provably, a mean lesbian. I think it's the hair: Mullenweg stole the retro-fauxhawk look from yours truly, I believe. Swisher does ask Mullenweg, "How do you make money at this?" But she's too crushed out to point out that Mullenweg already has made money, at least for himself, by selling a chunk of his company to investors. A digest of the interview: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Ian Bell: Good interview, Matt seems to really have his head on his shoulders. I think with numbers that big, they can... more » | Other threads
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security
Google's Blogger flooded by spammers
Over the last few months, wily spammers may have figured out how to crack the security feature known as "captchas." With an army of compromised Windows PCs known as botnets, they've been using their new power to flood Google's Blogger with spam. Why Blogger? More »
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By Jackson WestComment by DaveMcClure500Hats: wait... Google's Blogger is being used by spammers?!? NO, SRSLY?!?!?! Shocked, i am shocked. yo jackson, might want to wind your... more » | Other threads
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blogging kills
MessageDance trying to cash in on "blogging kills" scare
While exploiting tragic deaths and blogger heatlh problems for a trend piece in the New York Times is bad, trying to gin up new customers by jumping on the bandwagon is yet worse, but that's just what MessageDance is doing with their latest email direct marketing campaign: "Power blogging minus the heart attack!" Especially since it seems to imply that making it easier to post updates anywhere and anytime will somehow relieve the pressure to constantly stay on top of the news.
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By Jackson WestComment by Rachel Marsden: Why is it seen as a bad thing when bloggers die from blogging? It's merely Darwinism at its finest. more » | Other threads
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bloggers
Local woman dumps newfangled RSS feeds to type in website addresses the old-fashioned way
An online publishing veteran who goes by the name of Halsted has stopped drinking from the RSS firehose. She says she's not missing her feed reader's unread items folder:Nothing has changed. I spend my time writing, reading, and puzzle-solving instead, and my stress levels are markedly down. Now I am absolutely convinced that I need to ditch my RSS reader permanently, and only read a handful of feeds on a start page like iGoogle or Netvibes.
As a journalist, it's my duty to call three friends for quotes to support my article about the "Slow Web" movement now. I expect some blogger will get a book deal for the inevitable manifesto. (Photo by Jef Poskanzer)
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By Jackson WestComment by Runeshai: I did that a few months ago. It's a much simpler way to keep up on things I want... more » | Other threads
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great moments in pr
Microsoft pretends Vista sales video is a gag, and CNET editor buys it
With the leak of an internal sales video, Microsoft is having its ironic cake and pretending not to eat it too. Its marketing team produced an awful spoof of Bruce Springsteen singing about Vista. One should note: Companies do this routinely to motivate their salespeople, but the innocents in engineering normally aren't exposed to the cheerleading routines. Microsoft's spin on the video: It's a gag! We're being sly! And incredibly, CNET editor Charles Cooper bought their line, quoting an anonymous flack: "They thought folks internally would get a kick out of not taking themselves so seriously all the time." More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by 0-o-0: The CNET editor was duped. Inside line: Windows Client Communications PR team is trying frantically to spin their own... more » | Other threads
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