Gawker
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livejournal
The Russian Bear Slashes a Social Network
The bubble in social networking has burst, decisively. LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut 12 of 28 U.S. employees — and offered them no severance, we're told.
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By Owen ThomasComment by RevHalofan: How do I archive my blogs over there somewhere else? This is like mom throwing my diary in the fireplace,... 9 Responses | Other threads
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pownce
Temptress of Silicon Valley shuts down useless site
Earlier this year, Leah Culver appeared on the cover of a tech magazine blowing an enormous pink bubble. But the shrill-voiced San Francisco programmer no longer desires fame — even the modest sort afforded Silicon Valley's microcelebrities. The turnabout seems odd, considering how aggressively she once courted notoriety.
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By Owen ThomasComment by jpontin: "Is it sexist to point this out?" Ah, yeah, Owen - it kind of is. People date in their own... 10 Responses | Other threads
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caption contest
The face of a $747 strike price
This summer, LiveJournal founder turned Google engineer Brad Fitzpatrick briefly sported a fu manchu, a facial-hair styling usually seen in old movies, gay porn, and old gay porn movies. His wistful expression seemed to capture today's end-of-an-era weltanschauung. Will his new pals at Google get trimmed away like his 'stache? Suggest a better caption in the comments, and the best one will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: "Tesla's alternative energy: the tow truck," by Scalawag. (Photo by Brad Fitzpatrick)
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By Owen ThomasComment by LychorindaAristaeus: This is the face of a $747 strike price. 1 Responses | Other threads
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brad fitzpatrick
Six Apart exec on LiveJournal founder: "Waaaaay down the path to madness"
Brad Fitzpatrick has a Googlephone, and you don't. And what's he doing with his amazing Android-powered toy? Using Google's mobile operating system, Fitzpatrick is coding an automatic garage-door opener, which senses the presence of his phone using Wi-Fi. He can do this because he's already hooked his garage door up to a Web server. Writes Six Apart executive Michael Sippey on this momentous occasion: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by tolles: Actually, having read the orginal post, the key here is that Brad rides a motorcycle...*every* motorcyclist has dreams of not... 1 Responses | Other threads
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livejournal
Just ignore us
Everyone tells you to listen to your customers. In the case of Brad Fitzpatrick's LiveJournal, an online-diary site latched onto by pervy teens and other oddballs, that may have been exactly the wrong advice, says one LiveJournal user. [Randomwalker's Journal] -
ted dziuba
The last thing the Internet needs: more solutions
Cherished crank Ted Dziuba, the cofounder of news-search startup Pressflip, still hates the Internet. His latest target: OpenID, a technology he accuses of being "too San Francisco" — all idealistic posturing, no practical application. OpenID is a universal user-authorization scheme created by Brad Fitzpatrick back when he was at LiveJournal. An average user, Dziuba complains, doesn't need OpenID if they want to have a shared login across multiple websites — they just use the same login and password across multiple websites. More »
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Comment by trevo: Its initiatives like this that create unneeded complexity in software. Take WSDL - a Web Service format for services to... 1 Responses | Other threads
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internet famous
Journalists do it for the lulz
The trolls will always be with us, because the Internet is full of insane sociopaths. Charming sociopaths, clever sociopaths, perhaps even magazine-profile-worthy sociopaths — but sociopaths all the same. Wired profiled a videogame-heavy set of Internet trolls in January. The New York Times Magazine hunted and nabbed bigger game this weekend — Jason Fortuny and the troll known as "Weev," who was photographed for the story (above). This photo in particular may draw fascinated stares. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Jmcl: "Weev" has never worked for Technorati. more » | Other threads
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once you're lucky, twice you're good
F is for Fitzpatrick, and "hookers and blow"
LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick is a prankster, as evidenced by his Halloween costume last year, when the new Googler dressed up as Facebook to mock his coworkers' fears of the social network. I'm told that in Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, Sarah Lacy's new book about Web 2.0, there's an anecdote about Fitzpatrick submitting an expense report — successfully! — for "hookers and blow" when he worked at blog software startup Six Apart. That was likely a reference to the early days of LiveJournal, when users made ridiculous accusations that Fitzpatrick was spending money meant for servers and bandwidth on "hookers and blow." We'd love to hear more, but alas, Fitzpatrick only got 8 out of 294 pages, according to the book's index. Here's the page for "D" through "F": More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by BobDope: The way to do this is a naming convention where your servers are named things like hookers and blow. more » | Other threads
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geek love
Help Leah Culver pick the right man
Pownce founder Leah Culver has made more geeks go wild than we can count. For starters: Daniel Burka of Digg; LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick; and Justin.tv's Kyle Vogt. They're all history, however. One tipster confirms our suspicions that Culver and Flickr's Cal Henderson are "definitely dating." But another writes:I tried to hit on Leah Culver at a party not too long ago but that ended in EPIC FAIL. Apparently she was dating Andy Smith from Jaiku at the time. I have no idea if that has changed, but I wouldn't doubt it.
People, we're sure you're already realize this calls for a poll to settle the matter. Please help Leah pick the right man. More » -
deals
Google to buy Plaxo — and a new pal — for $200 million?
Plaxo, the contact-sharing service trying to reinvent itself as a social network, may have sold itself to Google for something close to $200 million. And if the rumor's true, I think the companies may be doing it out of friendship. One could bloviate endlessly here about industry consolidation, user-data portability, and so on — and I'm sure you'll read plenty of that. I think the real reason is much simpler. Brad Fitzpatrick, the LiveJournal founder now leading Google's social-network strategy, wants to work with Joseph Smarr, Plaxo's chief platform architect. I sat with the two at lunch at the Web 2.0 Summit last year, and they got along famously. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by vijaymv_in: Wanted to know what is going to happen to Mark Jen working with plaxo who was fired from Google for... more » | Other threads
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social networks
Brad Fitzpatrick wants to know who your friends are
Remember how NotchUp spammed us all alst week? Get ready for a lot more. Brad Fitzpatrick, the LiveJournal founder who noisily left Six Apart for Google last summer, has launched his first big project: a tool which identifies your friends across multiple social networks, so you can invite them all wherever you go. What this means: If you're sick of zombie bites on Facebook, you're going to hate the World Wide Web after Fitzpatrick gets done with it. But forget the spam issue: Am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible idea on principle? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Carlos: Brad "dropped the ball on social networking" Fitzpatrick more » | Other threads
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separated at net worth
The Share Bears in the Land Without Portability
Caring is sharing, people, especially when it comes to your personal data. Leading developers from important social-network sites joining a "data-portability" advocacy group doesn't represent history in the making. It's a marketing campaign to make everyone feel sickly sweet, knowing that these websites are so concerned about our information. Like the Care Bears, by signing on to the DataPortability Working Group, top coders like Brad Fitzpatrick, Dave Recordon, and Ben Ling have joined forces to form a group which we can only call by one name. Presenting: The Share Bears! More »
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By Tim FaulknerComment by sample032: Cheer bear is totally gay, people. more » | Other threads
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social networks
Facebook and Google join data-swapping group, change nothing
Google and Facebook have joined the DataPortability Workgroup, in a moment the blogosphere is heralding as historic. The group's mission is to make all personal data "discoverable" and "shareable" across websites. This moment is about as historic as the intake of oxygen. The beauty of working groups is that they rarely change anything other than public perception. Brad Fitzpatrick of Google and Benjamin Ling make particularly handsome poster boys for the data-sharing movement. [They can port our data anytime. - Ed.] But neither has real pull to change their employer's business strategy. More »
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By Tim FaulknerComment by macbeach: What will be historic (and surprising) is if Facebook actually changes anything about the way their system works. ... more » | Other threads
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party report
For LiveJournal, Six Aparting is such sweet sorrow
Users of LiveJournal call it "defriending." As terrible as it sounds, defriending's not really that bad; it just means you're bored with someone and don't want to hear about their issues anymore. Or share yours with them. That, in essence, is what Six Apart, the San Francisco-based blog-software company, has decided to do with LiveJournal, the online community it acquired from Brad Fitzpatrick in 2005. Andrew Anker, Six Apart's vice president ofchopping the company into little bits for convenient and lucrative dispositioncorporate development, orchestrated the sale of LiveJournal to Sup, a Russian media company which already runs a localized version of the site. With the sale, Anker and the rest of Six Apart's team are letting LiveJournal know, as gently as they can, that they're just not interested in its problems. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Jeremy: @Owen Thomas: I get a nice shout out, though, for my Pink shirts, right? more » | Other threads
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geek love
What's Sup with Brad Fitzpatrick?
Brad Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal, is a Silicon Valley archetype: The brilliant engineer and troubled young man. In noisily quitting Six Apart, the San Francisco-based software company which acquired his company two years ago, one of the reasons he gave was that he was tired of working on LiveJournal. Now Sup, the Russian company acquiring LiveJournal, has asked Fitzpatrick to join an advisory board meant to protect users' interests, and he's gladly agreed. Why the sudden change of mind? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Grimmtooth: Noisy exit? You keep using that phrase. Let's get something clear here - Vallywag was the only venue "making noise"... more » | Other threads
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livejournal
Six Apart exiles its troublesome child to Russia
Since acquiring LiveJournal in 2005, Six Apart has gotten little but grief from the blogging site. Now, at last, it's gotten some cash. The San Francisco-based blog-software company has sold LiveJournal to Sup, a Russian media concern. Ostensibly, the purchase of LiveJournal two years ago was meant to improve Six Apart's Web technology and accelerate its entry into ad-supported blog publishing. Instead? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by ooorrr: Dave, do you have info for us? Tell us what you know! more » | Other threads
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halloween
Brad Fitzpatrick says "Boo!" and I do too
Googler Brad Fitzpatrick has dressed up as Facebook for Halloween. Ironic, since he might easily have been a Facebooker dressing up in Google's primary colors right now. Before jumping from Six Apart, he interviewed at both Facebook and Google. And now the two companies are set up for a tumultuous clash — not just over hiring one employee, but over the future of online ads. Facebook is set to announce its own targeted-ad network next week, taking on Google's AdSense; Google is soon to launch open standards for widgets, competing with Facebook's platform for developers. Dave Morin, who manages that platform, had his AIM status set with this message: "Bring it, Fitzpatrick." It's getting scary up in here. Which raises the question: How am I going to put the fright on Silicon Valley this Halloween? More » -
brad fitzpatrick
Google's worst nightmare
Our spy cameras have penetrated the inner sanctum of the Googleplex! Sneaking up on Brad Fitzpatrick from behind, we caught a picture of his "epic" Halloween costume. "He is dressed as one of Google's largest fears!" an informant whispers. What could his dread outfit be? Who makes Larry and Sergey sweat? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by 0x6772: @uncoveditor: comment on failpost is win. more » | Other threads
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lazy valleywag
How scary is Brad Fitzpatrick?
We hear that Brad Fitzpatrick, the LiveJournal creator recently hired by Google, has an "epic" costume. Well, we heard that from Fitzpatrick, actually. "Yo, rumor is you need to go down to Google and get a pic of Brad Fitz's costume," a mutual friend IMs. A drive down to Mountain View isn't really in the cards. But is there a helpful coworker who might break the Googleplex's dark veil of security and send Valleywag a photo? We'd be most obliged. And we promise not to rat you out to the Goostapo. (Photo by Randal Alan Smith) -
breaking
Google rushes to open itself up
Mark Zuckerberg, are you feeling scared? Google isn't just moving in on your turf, it's beating you to the punch. By almost a week. Since hiring Brad Fitzpatrick, the creator of LiveJournal and a proponent of open standards, Google has been rumored to be working on tools to let developers build software for multiple social networks. An announcement had been expected next Monday. That would have been a day before Facebook plans to unveil a new ad network to compete with Google's AdSense. Instead of being late, as rumored, Google's early. On Thursday, Google will unveil OpenSocial, a set of common software-development standards that Hi5, Orkut, LinkedIn, Friendster, Ning, Salesforce.com, and Oracle have agreed to use. Call them the Google Gang. The Gang, in turn will allow developers like RockYou and iLike to develop one common widget which will work on any of their sites. The goal? To make it unattractive for developers to lock themselves into the Facebook platform. Boo!
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Comment by tolles: Uh -- @Rick -- I wouldn't write off Brad Fitzpatrick... LiveJournal's hardly a failure -- and some of the stuff... more » | Other threads
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web 2.0 summit
Web 2.0 Summit returns to Web 1.9 roots
Can you believe that last week's Web 2.0 Summit was the fourth such conference? Its humble beginnings were barely in evidence, as venture capitalists, corporate biz-dev types, and M&A scouts seemed to outnumber the startup founders they were trying to hunt down. Friday afternoon was a return to the old school, however, with Flickr cofounder Stewart Butterfield and LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick among the presenters. Sadly, John Doerr, the expert inflater of the first dotcom bubble, did not cry. Check the photo gallery for the conference's final, terrifying orgy of schmoozing. Some participants were so exhausted that, by the closing cocktail party, they were making deals with their eyes closed. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by ChiefCynic: I hope she uses her maiden name, or is it really Michelle Battelle? Do tell. Be well. And go to... more » | Other threads
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web 2.0 to english
Social networking for dummies
WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon, the nerdy duo working on programming standards for opening up social networks, are presenting a thoroughly less nerdy version of their usual presentation. I chatted with Fitzpatrick, now an engineer at Google, who said he realized he needed to dumb it down for the audience of people wealthy enough to afford the $3,595 ticket price at this conference. The simple metaphor they came up with to explain the problem of closed social networks? Instant messenger. "If Brad is on Yahoo and I'm on AOL, we still want to talk to each other," explains Recordon, who's now at Six Apart, Fitzpatrick's old company. The social graph? "Who my friends are," Recordon sums up. OAuth, the network-ID standard Recordon and Fitzpatrick are championing? "The valet key for the Web," says Fitzpatrick. I can just hear the rich guys in the audience thinking, "Great, kid. Go park my car already." (Photo by CottonCandy) -
superficial
Leah and Brad's breakup leaves gossip blog despondent
We had high hopes when we found out that Leah Culver and Brad Fitzpatrick, pictured above at a party in August, had started dating. Fitzpatrick, the LiveJournal founder turned Google engineer, and Culver, a cofounder with Digg's Kevin Rose of Pownce, the Twitter-and-file-sharing mashup, seemed heaven-sent to the eyes of a tech gossip columnist. Brad 'n' Leah could be our geek Brangelina. Both partners were sufficiently techie, and, thankfully, good-looking enough to get on a year-end hot geeks lists. Also, neither seemed afraid of a bit of drama. For example, Culver's recent staged snit against Rose where she claimed Digg ripped off Pownce, and Fitzpatrick's confrontation of a romantic rival at a party. So it was such a disappointment for us to learn that they had ended their nascent relationship last week. More »
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Comment by Nick Douglas: @Jeremy: You're implying you get laid? If you're gonna convince me of that, you'll have to slip me a roofie... more » | Other threads
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comments
Brad Fitzpatrick coming unplugged at Google?
From the comments, a fresh rumor about Brad Fitzpatrick, the LiveJournal founder widely believed to be working on social networks at Google. The commenter, who claims to work at Google, says Fitzpatrick is actually working on free, ad-supported Wi-Fi. Curious, since Google's Wi-Fi projects have faced trouble recently. A deal with San Francisco for free Wi-Fi fell apart thanks to Google partner EarthLink's straitened finances. Why would a tech star like Fitzpatrick work on such a seemingly doomed project? With that caveat, the report on Fitzpatrick's new project, from googleyes, after the jump. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by 0x6772: You can do that as long as you meant "Mountain View near G-plex" by "city". more » | Other threads
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brad fitzpatrick
Open feud splits a social network
The notion of social networks like Facebook and Google's Orkut was that they would connect real-world friends, not drive them apart. But a push, driven by technical idealists, to "open" such websites could be driving a wedge between two old friends. David Recordon, right, who recently rejoined blog-software maker Six Apart, has cast aspersions on efforts by Google to make it easier for programmers to hook their software — like Facebook's popular applications — into Orkut and other Google products. So far, it may sound like all business. Companies trash rivals' plans all the time. Here, however, is where things get a bit more personal. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Owen Thomas: @0x6772: Interesting. So why, then, did Recordon brag to colleagues at Six Apart about his intent to "call Brad out"? more » | Other threads
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social networks
Facebook app displays MySpace profiles
It's either News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch's worst nightmare — or his wet dream. Two recent college graduates, Jess Martin and Drew Chen, have launched, as we predicted, SpaceLift, an application on Facebook that takes a chaotic, ugly MySpace profile page and displays it in Facebook's spare, blue-and-white layout. For Murdoch, who's voiced admiration for Facebook, even though News Corp. owns social-networking rival MySpace, this could be disastrous. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Megan McCarthy: @ThatKid: It's worth writing up for that mock profile alone. more » | Other threads
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burning man
LiveJournal founder does it in the desert
BLACK ROCK CITY — Rumors that the bigwigs of geekery are headed here en masse are rife in the fanciful world of Internet rumor — but proof is spotty on the playa-dust ground. The strongest contender for Big Geek on Campus so far is Brad Fitzpatrick, formerly of Six Apart fame, and now at Google. This tidbit actually transcends rumor, as Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal, has posted his future playa address on his own LiveJournal blog. If he's a very clever boy, he will discover the Wi-Fi-fu that makes updating his LJ from the desert possible, but in the meantime, we are having daydreams of drunkenly invading his camp when he gets here and demanding that he friend us. (Photo by Brad Fitzpatrick) -
politics
Freaks lure geeks to Austin to talk budget
So Brad Fitzpatrick, Jay Adelson, and Jimmy Wales walk into a bar ... sorry, the only joke here is how the creators of LiveJournal, Digg, and Wikipedia — three top experts on social networks — wasted their weekend. If they walked into a bar, I'd hope it was to drink away their sorrows after discovering they flew out to Austin, Texas for a whole lot of nothing. That's the word I've gotten, anyway, from attendees at last weekend's "We Are All Actors" conference, organized by the League of Technical Voters, a group campaigning to make the Federal budget less obscure. "The meeting sucked, actually (didn't stay on topic, more or less skipped important agenda items, stupid shakespeare/actors theme, etc)," read one passed-along report. Typical, if disappointing. And telling. More » -
social networks
Six Apart's Brad boy is Googling a new idea
A Valleywag spy reports sighting Brad Fitzpatrick, the creator of LiveJournal and outgoing Six Apart executive, at Philz Coffee in San Francisco. Fitzpatrick was there with book publisher and geek icon Tim O'Reilly and David Recordon, a former Six Apart engineer who left to join VeriSign last year. The three were working on a presentation on "social network portability." Now, that's no surprise — Fitzpatrick has been openly interested in the idea of swapping personal information between websites for a while, and he and Recordon — who we hear, by the way, may be rejoining Six Apart — helped create the OpenID standard, which helps accomplish just that. No, what makes this geek sighting fascinating is that Fitzpatrick, we hear — though neither he nor Google has confirmed this — is headed to Google. And Google has been trying to get back in the social-network game. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Joe Clark: By "though neither he nor Google has confirmed this," do you mean to suggest you masqueraded as a real journalist... more » | Other threads
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Comment by kraptek: Y'all only got 1:23 of footage? Special dispensation? Hmmm. more » | Other threads
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brad fitzpatrick
LiveJournal creator leaves as Six Apart fails to spin
Word is that Brad Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal and chief architect of Six Apart, is leaving the troubled blog-software company. And the fact that you're hearing about from a gossip blog rather than the transparency-loving company is itself a sign of how deep the problems run. Fitzpatrick, who sold his company, Danga Interactive, to Six Apart two years ago, has vested his shares, declared his boredom with Six Apart, and after weighing offers from Google and Facebook, has chosen to head to Google, a source close to Fitzpatrick says. The only reason that Six Apart management hasn't announced it, the source adds, is that they can't figure out how to spin it. Here, let me help, guys! It's bad. And Fitzpatrick's departure is just the tip of Six Apart's reality-denying iceberg. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by shatteredshards: @k80: Try taking a look around LJ, and you'll see just how many people are no longer paying for the... more » | Other threads
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pic of the day
Livejournal's romantic rivals make nice
Could this be the world's most awkward photograph? On the left, Brad Fitzpatrick, founder of Livejournal, the online diary site, and still a key exec at the company that bought him out, San Francisco's Six Apart. Also at last night's party in San Francisco's South of Market district, on the right of the snap, Artur Bergman, a colleague who had a widely-known affair with Fitzpatrick's wife. Correction: former colleague, and former wife. More »
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By Nick DentonComment by celebrity-chaser: oh lord. there had to be a lot of booze at that party to get that photo to happen. more » | Other threads
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brad fitzpatrick
Programming legend JWZ snarks Brad Fitzpatrick
Now that is how to be "brash and outspoken." Last night, LiveJournal creator Brad Fitzpatrick asked on his blog, "How should I hack?" and offered a poll. More »
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By Nick DouglasComment by talula_fairie: "I think you ought to figure out what to do to make people stop defecting from LJ to Myspace, because... more » | Other threads
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