Valleywag is Gawker's column from Silicon Valley. Edited by Ryan Tate, it carries technology and internet gossip — the news too scurrilous and juicy for the industry's trade rags.
hypermark-sf: Great piece. My favorite still remains Google SVP Jonathan Rosenberg's self-serving sermon on 'The Meaning of Open' wherein he pontificated how open ... more »
sfBirdie: It's a cult.
BTW, this covers basically all of my issues with goog, so nice work. more »
Trai_Dep: Yet it's still so difficult to track down decent double-amputee transsexual midget porn.
...Priorities, Google Lords, priorities! more »
DennyCrane: And yet Google's contrition has been limited. The company response boils down to, "well that's unfortunate but it's also the way the world works now."... more »
After asking for information on Chris DeWolfe's rumored impending purchase of an unidentified gaming platform, we've heard from multiple tipsters claiming well-capitalized Playdom is in play. Less clear is who would buy: DeWolfe or MySpace, the social network he co-created.
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A well-placed little birdie tells us MySpace co-creator and former CEO Chris DeWolfe will close on a deal to buy a "social gaming platform play" as early as tomorrow. Any idea what that might be?
The struggle for MySpace's future pitted East against West and North against South. Silicon Valley lost; Los Angeles and New York won. And all fired CEO Owen Van Natta could do was smile, shrug and crack open some cold ones.
Internet superhunk and MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta quit right as he was on the cusp of becoming one of our generation's great social networking anti-heroes. He's leaving MySpace just 10 months after taking the job. Update: He was fired.
We hear News Corporation is winding down MySpace spinoff Slingshot Labs, a vestige of the media conglomerate's efforts to retain MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe. But the labs are hatching one last diabolical plot, on behalf of the Wall Street Journal.
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Just as the public was learning that a huge chunk of Zynga's social gaming revenue came from scammy "quizzes" and "special offers," Silicon Valley's most prestigious venture capitalists rewarded the company with $15 million. Hey, that's just how VC's roll.
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Mark Pincus recently cut off the scamsters who supply his company with revenue. But before he bowed to controversy, the Facebook games merchant was more cavalier about corporate morality, even griping about his "bullshit" Harvard ethics class and idiot classmates.
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Facebook and MySpace might finally pay the price for the big social gaming scandal: At least one law firm is investigating whether to launch a class action suit on behalf of duped users.
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It's hard to imagine much of a future for MySpace. Which is probably why it took a science fiction author to do so: Bruce Sterling says the flagging social network is an ideal shantytown for the nihilistic unemployed. Compelling!
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Silicon Valley pundits like to talk about social media as a potential geyser of cash. What they leave out is that one of the only ways social networks like Facebook, MySpace have done that is joining league with online scammers.
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MySpace now says it is no longer competing with Facebook, the rival social network with far more users. No, now MySpace will focus on the niche of music and digital entertainment. And compete with Apple and Google.
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Media mogul and grumpy old man Rupert Murdoch has developed a "personal antipathy to the Internet," biographer Michael Wolff writes. Murdoch even thinks MySpace, which he himself paid $580 million for, is kind of a criminal piece of garbage:
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The grunge princess has long terrorized the world and the English language with her ramblings on MySpace and Twitter. She's the first celeb sued saying something on Twitter, but now the fight is getting personal—and ugly!
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Two years ago, music service iLike appeared to be set: Its CEO said it was "made," its investor mused it could be a "billion-dollar winner," and the press was enthralled. Now the poster child is a cautionary tale.
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Without a clear reason for being, Twitter is about to flail its way into a "cyber-ghetto" for the aimless, alongside second-tier social network MySpace. At least that's the argument of a provocative post from Cody Brown, NYU's new-media wunderkind.
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Social networking is for lonely, psychotic shut-ins. Or at least that's the upshot of the jokes in the attached clip from Adam Sandler vehicle Funny People. And still MySpace apparently cooperated with the filmmakers; its co-founder and logo appear.
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MySpace's CEO purportedly keeps his body pretty tight. But he should lay off the weight obsession at work. Owen Van Natta said MySpace was "bloated" when he laid off 400 workers; now they're reportedly called "fat" to their faces.
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MySpace today confirmed the rumors it will lay off 300 international staff, on top of 400 U.S. layoffs last week. The social network also shoved aside purported co-founder Tom Anderson, who has a new gig: NOT going to the office.
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