Gawker
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books
Facebook Tell-All Released Into Wild
Facebook's creation myth has left the building, or so we hear: Fortune is said to be readying an excerpt of Ben Mezrich's tell-all book and movie about the social network. And another publication is, naturally, trying to ruin the scoop. More »
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By Ryan TateComment by Niko Bellic: Apparently, our entire future depends on men who need to make a billion dollars just to get laid. 2 Responses | Other threads
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twitterati
The Twitterati, Now Lazier Than Ever!
Why hit the phones when you can just do your work on Twitter? Jason Pontin, Caroline Waxler, and a Washington Post reporter show us how to tweetsource your way to more free time: More »
2,501
By Owen ThomasComment by Lulupasternak: Considering how badly Trunk needs investors, a cleaned-out In box is hardly a healthy sign. more » | Other threads
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great moments in pr
Facebook Gets the Fortune Cover Curse
A breathless Fortune story — "How Facebook Is Taking Over Our Lives" — reports that more people use Facebook than watched this year's Super Bowl. Facebook's board of directors must be thrilled, right? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Widget Economist: Regarding Fortune: Don't RTFA. This is even more evidence web 2.0 shits don't measure success in dollars. You people fail to recognize... 9 Responses | Other threads
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death of print
Even Listicles Being Downsized at Fortune
Bad news is still big. It's just the articles that are getting smaller. 2008 was 80 percent less dumb than 2007, according to Fortune! A year ago, Fortune readers were treated to a full 101 moments of dumbness in an end-of-year comic look-back. This year? Only 21 dumb moments to be found.
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By Owen ThomasComment by oldtaku: Yeah, I have to say those 101 moments always had at least a dozen kneeslappers (including a couple I'd somehow... 1 Responses | Other threads
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death of print
Fortune stops covering businesses it used to tout
Just last month, Fortune reported on how investors are still bullish on green technology. And there's plenty in its pages about the bright future of online media. But Fortune's accountants must not read the magazine! Fortune has laid off two reporters on the cleantech beat, and all but one of its New York- and San Francisco-based online reporters, who wrote primarily for the magazine's website.
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By Owen ThomasComment by .: Its gonna get worse before it gets better. I hope some companies (like Gawker) can restructure during this time and... more » | Other threads
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great moments in journalism
Fortune unpublishes report of 3,000 job cuts at Yahoo
Is Yahoo cutting 3,000-plus jobs? A source inside the company says plans have been set to slash 3,500 jobs on December 10. And, briefly, Fortune's Techland blog agreed, reporting that Bain & Co. had recommended Yahoo cut 3,000 of its 15,000 employees. The Fortune post has been unpublished, though it still appears in Google News. I've called the writers to ask what happened to the story. Here's the excerpt which ran on Google News: More » -
valleywag calendar
Joi Ito is headed to a "Fortune thingie" — are you?
The invite-only Fortune Brainstorm: Tech is taking over the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay through Wednesday. Dreadfully convenient for Robert Scoble, who lives in town; not for Japanese VC Joi Ito, who's jetting across the Pacific. The maelstrom of people and ideas includes the likes of Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, the World Bank's Daniel Kaufmann and One Laptop per Child's Nicholas Negroponte. If your thought-leader status was somehow overlooked, fine-tune your leadership skills at tonight's East Bay Innovation Group. Organizational psychologist Peter Newton offers insight into how startups can grow strong and competent leadership. Ready for the next frontier? Klara Nahrstedt, a professor of Computer Science at Marc Andreessen's alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is in town indulging your sci-fi holodeck fantasies as she discusses Cisco's Teleimmersive Environment for Everybody. More » -
apple
Fortune ranks Steve Jobs replacement candidates, but we know who it will be already
Apple COO Timothy Cook is the man most likely to replace co-founder and current CEO Steve Jobs according to Fortune. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by Drunken Economist: @raincoaster: The SteveAir *is* thinner than the original. Haven't you seen the ghoul prowling the halls @1.Infinite.DogChase(tail);? Nice to see... more » | Other threads
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google
Larry Page says be like Thomas Edison, not Nikola Tesla
While taking risks is valuable, it's only those who can successfully commercialize their breakthrough ideas who will succeed, Google cofounder Larry Page told Fortune in a feature interview.You also need some leadership skills. You don't want to be Tesla. He was one of the greatest inventors, but it's a sad, sad story. He couldn't commercialize anything, he could barely fund his own research. You'd want to be more like Edison. If you invent something, that doesn't necessarily help anybody. You've got to actually get it into the world; you've got to produce, make money doing it so you can fund it.
In other words, it's not enough to innovate — you need to make a profit, too. Further nuggets of wisdom from the paper billionaire after the jump. More » -
exits
Ex-Business 2.0 editor leaves Fortune for Time
Josh Quittner, former editor of the defunct Business 2.0, has extricated himself from his unhappy stay at Fortune by returning to Time, where he previously worked. Tellingly, Time editor Rick Stengel refers to him as a "writer" for Fortune, though he had the ostensible title of executive editor. Stengel's memo is included below. Quittner's new gig is his old gig, covering consumer technology, which takes him back roughly 13 years in the progress of his career. Funny, because we'd heard that Quittner had held serious talks with Michael Arrington about joining TechCrunch, around the same time he wrote a laudatory column about the tech blogger. All that puffery, and no job in exchange? A shame. More » -
great moments in journalism
Fortune recycles its Jeff Bezos profile
There is only one story ever written about Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos: That he has defied the skeptics, has had the last laugh, and is now looking to the future. Fortune's latest iteration of the formula is no exception. It begins with an obligatory near-death experience — in this case, a not-quite-fatal helicopter ride near Bezos's West Texas spaceport. And then, Christlike, the escape from death, the resurrection, and the glory. The glory: A stock price driven up not by technical innovations like Amazon's Web services, but by expanding profit margins, the result of tightened R&D spending. Wall Street, not Bezos, has the last laugh, but that conclusion doesn't fit the formula. -
conflicts of interest
Fortune columnist fails to disclose Arrington tie
Josh Quittner, the Fortune executive editor who's reportedly plotting his escape from his gilded cage at the magazine, has written a perfunctory profile of TechCrunch blog impresario Michael Arrington. Nothing we haven't read before — including the obligatory paragraph about Arrington's conflicts of interest in writing about startups even as he invests in them. Quittner observes that the practice seems to boost Arrington's reputation in the Valley. One conflict Quittner never mentions: As editor of Business 2.0, where I worked for him, he tried to strike a deal with Arrington to save the magazine by merging it with TechCrunch. The effort failed, landing Quittner at Fortune.
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By Owen ThomasComment by matto: This one time, in 2001, I read an article in B2. Full disclosure. more » | Other threads
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josh quittner
Ex-Business 2.0 editor dumping Fortune for housing blog?
What is Josh Quittner, the former editor of Business 2.0, doing for his next act? Since September, he's had an unhappy career at Fortune, the Time Inc.-owned corporate sibling which took him and a few other refugees from the magazine in. He's been earning what we hear is a mid-six-figures salary playing Scrabulous, and then writing about it. (Actual quote from a recent column: "Clearly, I had too much time on my hands.") The latest I'd heard on Quittner, my former boss, was that he was leaving Fortune to return to Time, where he worked before joining Business 2.0, as its Marin County-based tech correspondent. But he may have another exit strategy in mind. in 2006, Quittner registered roofmagazine.com. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by your creepy uncle: It's funny b/c Business 2.0 cheerled the housing boom even well after it had burst. In fact, their final issue... more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
Jim Breyer times his bubble-popping just right
Fortune magazine, ever servile, provides a ready platform for the powerful with something to say. The latest on stage: Jim Breyer, the Accel Partners VC with a seat on Facebook's board. Breyer has a fair point: We may be seeing the cyclical bursting of another Silicon Valley bubble. Breyer says this happens once every seven years, roughly. But his timing is suspicious. Last October, Breyer gladly took Microsoft's bubbly $240 million for a microscopic stake in Facebook. Declaring the bursting of a bubble now may help hasten its advent, and in the process, make it harder for Facebook's rivals to raise money. But for Fortune readers' tech-stock portfolios, an early warning might have been more useful. Why didn't the magazine ring him up last fall? Fortune never mentions this. (Illustration by Sean McCabe for Fortune) -
apple
Jobs lied about cancer diagnosis at Stanford
A further revelation in Peter Elkind's Fortune profile of Apple CEO Steve Jobs: In a June 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, he told students, "About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer." Jobs first learned he had a form of pancreatic cancer in October 2003. [Fortune] -
apple
Fortune's cover story: Steve Jobs hid cancer for nine months
From October 2003 through July 2004, Steve Jobs hid the fact that he'd been diagnosed with a form of pancreatic cancer, according to a profile of Jobs in an upcoming issue of Fortune, now posted online. A serious charge: Jobs should have promptly disclosed his health scare to Apple shareholders, since he seems practically irreplaceable as Apple's CEO. (Only now is he admitting to thinking about a successor.) But Jobs's cancer scare is old news to most readers. Why is Fortune bringing it up now? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by raincoaster: @Oh No I Di'n't.: I just read the full article: apparently he had a history of intestinal issues, which is... more » | Other threads
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nerdfight
Quittner "silenced," says Fortune colleague
An extraordinary public slap, rarely seen in the genteel world of magazine publisher Time Inc.: Fortune appears to have momentarily taken executive editor Josh Quittner's Techland blog away from him and handed it to rival tech writer David Kirkpatrick. Quittner's recent blog rant about Facebook's Beacon was wrongheaded enough, but entirely undeserving of this humiliation — republishing, duplicatively, a Fortune.com column by Kirkpatrick in Quittner's blog. Kirkpatrick, left, declared that Quittner, right, had been "silenced" on the Facebook issue. He went on to tear apart, at length, Quittner's argument. All the more shaming, because Kirkpatrick is — how to put this gently? — a laughingstock among his colleagues. More » -
media
Fortune.com redesign rips off Portfolio.com
Fortune.com — what magazine publisher is calling Fortune's little corner of CNNMoney.com — relaunched today, and the Observer's Media Mob notes the site is "sleeker, whiter, cleaner" but bears a "strikingly" duh-we're-copycats resemblance to Portfolio.com. Whatever, let us know when Forbes.com relaunches with a design inspired by Fake Steve Jobs's Blogger template. In the meantime, here's a Valleywag poll asking you to pick which Web design best helps you forget that no one reads magazines — if you can even tell them apart. More »
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Comment by Choochoo: Oh NO! You surely screwed the pooch! Portfolio has a patent on all things Black and orange!! Seriously... nothing alike. If... more » | Other threads
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rumormonger
Fortune editor censors Larry and Lucy's wedding date
Which is mightier, the pen or the search engine? On October 19, Fortune editor Andy Serwer blogged a short-lived rumor that Google cofounder Larry Page will marry girlfriend Lucy Southworth on December 7. Short-lived, because the passage about the smooch-prone couple's happy news quickly disappeared from the page:Wedding Pages: Okay, you may have heard that Larry Page of Google is getting married. A friend of a friend of mine got this information via e-mail. The information did not include the bride's name (Lucy?) nor the location of the wedding. The wedding will be held on the weekend of December 7th. Some guests, depending on their location, will be leaving the evening of December 6th and others will be leaving the morning of December 7th. Guests will have the choice of leaving either the 10th or the 12th. A valid passport will be necessary for the event and it should be valid for more than 6 months after the event. (That last bit is a baffling.) You may remember that Sergey Brin married Anne Wojcicki earlier this year.
None of that shows up on the current version of the post. And the Google cache returns the edited post. Yahoo, however, obliges. (Go figure.) A screenshot of the original post after the jump. More » -
media
Fortune editor in town to boss ex-B2 staff around
Remember former Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner, whose tech magazine got shut down by parent company Time Inc.? Now an executive editor at Fortune, he outranks, on paper, assistant managing editor Jim Aley — the man he replaced as Business 2.0's editor five years ago. Which makes the following curious: The New York-based Aley, pictured above, is in town this week. Valleywag hears he started off his visit with a breakfast with Quittner. And then Aley met with the remnants of Business 2.0's staff, who now make up Fortune's San Francisco bureau — without Quittner. Remind us again who's in charge here? And if you want your startup written up in Fortune, who's the right guy to schmooze? -
media
A turnabout for Business 2.0's former boss
Time Inc. has officially announced Business 2.0's closure in an internal memo obtained by Jossip. In it, Time Inc. executive John Squires explains that folding in some of Business 2.0's staff into Fortune will give it "the largest San Francisco bureau of any major business publication." The Wall Street Journal bureau will still be twice its size, but never mind — we assume Squires meant "magazine." No, what's interesting in the memo is what's not said. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Owen Thomas: @arepb: You mean, a blog like this one? The one Sloan has had for almost a year now? more » | Other threads
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media
Business 2.0 staff faces Fortune-ate fate
There's no official word on the fate of Business 2.0, the Time Inc.-owned magazine where I used to work. The publication, once fated to shut down after its September issue, is still alive, thanks to a hastily granted extension of life support. The staff is working on the October issue, while higher-ups consider offers to buy the magazine that streamed in after word of its impending demise leaked. But they seem to have resigned themselves to the fate of being absorbed into larger sister publication Fortune, based on this sign: A magazine logo near the entrance has been altered to read "Fortune 2.0."
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By Owen ThomasComment by Owen Thomas: @fangsta: Thank you, I am enjoying reading the copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that was, as I've... more » | Other threads
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deathwatch
Fortune parties while Business 2.0 burns
Fortune's summer party, scheduled for today, has been postponed, ostensibly for weather reasons, as New York is under siege from a nor'easter. With sister publication Business 2.0 on the rocks, it might have been seemly to cancel it altogether. We've learned, however, that the all-day shindig has been rescheduled for tomorrow. So, as Fortune staffers party, Business 2.0 employees will continue huddling under a storm of their own. Rumors, true and false, are flying. (I should note that I'm covering this as a former Business 2.0 editor who worked at the magazine for seven years — but events are moving so fast that all of this comes from new reporting since I left, not any knowledge I acquired on the job.) Here's what I know, and what I don't know, so far: More » -
duh
Fortune editor David Kirkpatrick catches a clue, says he won't use the silly iMeme name for next year's conference. [The Sam Whitmore Sampler] -
venture capital
Everything you need to know about the VC panel at today's Fortune iMeme conference, including the sartorial choices of prominent moneymen. (Accel's Jim Breyer wore a CBGB shirt!) [Barrons] -
bubble 2.0
Today's Fortune iMeme confab in San Francisco began with a five-minute demonstration of how to properly sit in the Herman Miller Aeron chairs set up for conference attendees. [SFGate]
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Comment by bluehenbear: Clearly, this is a sign that the next internet bubble has begun...when is that facebook IPO? more » | Other threads
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fortune
Scoop: Fortune Magazine taps new managing editor
Fortune Magazine dumped managing editor Eric Pooley today, replacing him with Fortune writer and CNN anchor Andy Serwer, according to an all-hands e-mail sent to Time Inc. staff under an hour ago and obtained by Valleywag. More »
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By Nick DouglasComment by VanOwen: "Eric...is leaving FORTUNE and will be working with me and Jim Kelly" - J.H. I guess at Time, when your ego's... more » | Other threads
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google
Google Bitch #3: Publisher's Weakly
Should we really add commentary to the story of Google Bitch #3, the third "victim" from Fortune Small Business's new Google trend piece? Small-press publisher Lynne Rienner is pissed at the idea of Google digitizing the books she publishes, letting people search through them and possibly buy them. More » -
fortune
Google Bitch #2: The Wispy Web Startup
It's a brave new world, says Fortune Small Business as it moves to Google "victim" #2. This Google Bitch has a more valid complaint than Google Bitch #1. Mike Landis sells site analytics software that now competes with Google Analytics. More »
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By Nick DouglasComment by Nick Douglas: One reader writes in: you are considerably uninformed when it comes to analytics. sitemeter is hardly a leading analytics company.... more » | Other threads
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nerdhunt
Where my geeks at?
So Philip Kaplan's no longer running AdBrite — I think we established that. Where are all the other geeks moving? More » -
fortune
Buy the bubble: Fortune's Web 2.0 investment guide
Apparently there is a new boom (not a bubble! not a bubble!) in the Valley. I WAS NOT PREVIOUSLY AWARE. Fortune hands down its mighty investment wisdom for the Web 2.0 boom: More » -
bill gates
How Bill Gates works
No, not "fueled by the blood of those he has devoured." Bill Gates shows Fortune Magazine how he gets stuff done. Some highlights about the elder statesman of the software world: More » -
fortune
Work-life balance is for pussies
Now this is ridiculous. Fortune Magazine lists Yahoo and Microsoft in its list of "100 Best Companies to Work For". But no Google. Do the 18 massage therapists at the Googleplex count for nothing? Even more ludicrous: Fortune assigns weighting to work-life balance, a measure by which Google presumably scores poorly. As if anyone cares about balance in an up market. I always thought, in Silicon Valley, work-life balance was a polite term for unemployment. More »
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1-35 of 35 for "Valleywag, Fortune"
