Gawker
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conflicts of interest
Silicon Alley's Bitter Awards Scramble
For a startup founder itching to cash out, the recession can be tough: The economy fades hopes for an acquisition or plum funding round. Perhaps this explains some of the testiness around this year's awards from Silicon Alley Insider. More »
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By Ryan TateComment by thecowardlylion: Oh, no say it ain't so. PR is the new marketing?! I am so proud of us little Internet babies. We... more » | Other threads
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videuhoh
Henry Blodget's Love/Hate Relationship with Eliot Spitzer
United by ignominy, former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget has forgiven Eliot Spitzer, the prosecutor who cost him his job. And he's getting softer on him by the day.
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By Owen ThomasComment by Bring It On: Why is Blodget suddenly getting so much coverage? He has been writing articles from time to time for Crain's and... 8 Responses | Other threads
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blogging for dollars
When bloggers blog bloggers, is the result blather — or better?
Did you know Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen has joined eBay's board? Why yes, it's true — and it happened last month. VentureBeat editor Eric Eldon had gotten a belated tip about the hire, and published the story without checking the date. "I made a stupid mistake," he tells me. (He was more oblique in Twitter.) Eldon rapidly took the story down, but not before it was syndicated to The Industry Standard, where it caught the eye of Nicholas Carlson, my former charge at Valleywag who has landed at Silicon Alley Insider. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by eze: Well, I certainly deserved this spanking, Owen. Now I'm going to have to stay up all night stealing your scoops.... 3 Responses | Other threads
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peter kafka
Lazy reporter crowdsources new column
Peter Kafka is Kara Swisher's latest star hire at AllThingsD. She stole him from Silicon Alley Insider, where he worked with Henry Blodget. At SAI, Kafka always seemed to do fine without invoking the wisdom of the crowd. Why is Kara pushing him to go on and on about nothing? His first post was the standard Web 2.0 "Hello, world." His second takes 400 words to restate its own headline. Peter, here's my first and last free rewrite. Give me credit for not saying "Kafka-esque." More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by ShyamalikaHespera: AllThingsD is a total sinkhole. All anybody does is spout idiotic commentary on there. Soon Peter will devolve to talking... 1 Responses | Other threads
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great moments in journalism
Indian gangbangers get rich off U.S. tech industry
"'Thanks to convoluted laws and corrupt officials, claiming ownership over a piece of property in Bangalore can be as easy as hiring thugs to paint your name on the side of a building.' The chaos makes gangsters who can impose order — like the murderous Muthappa Rai — very wealthy." More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by michaellamb: innnneresting. So you're saying that we can get back our outraageous 10months of rent deposit on our place and just... 1 Responses | Other threads
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silicon alley insider
Henry Blodget needs more layoffs to write about
"Yahoo will almost certainly fire too few employees when it announces its mass layoffs this week," predicts Henry Blodget, the disgraced stock analyst everyone now listens to. Henry's got a bunch of charts you can look at, or you can read his kicker: "What's the smart amount of spending decline to plan for? We think about 10 percent next year and slightly more in 2010. We would also plan on the decline lasting at least two years."
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By Paul BoutinComment by VernPeneus: Henry Blodget is the last guy that any of you should be listening to for financial advice or commentary. This... more » | Other threads
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nerdfight
Henry Blodget's family feud
Why did disgraced stock analyst Henry Blodget post a long email by Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis to Silicon Alley Insider, and then take it down? There's the obvious reason: Calacanis hadn't given permission for it to be republished. But Silicon Alley Insider has reprinted Calacanis's emails before. We think it more has to do with the fight that broke out in the comments between Calacanis and Howard Lindzon, a Phoenix, Ariz. hedge-fund manager who owns a piece of Blodget's blog. Could it be that Calacanis's copyright gave Blodget a convenient excuse to unpublish the piece — an item that was generating ill will between one of his investors and a startup CEO whom Blodget thought it expedient to suck up to? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by emnem: Howard Lindzon writes and processes information very poorly. He's loosened his trap on SAI before in response to many posts... 2 Responses | Other threads
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caroline waxler
Henry Blodget taps Forbes survivor to edit tabloid business-news site
Does Henry Blodget, the disgraced former Wall Street stock analyst, have a Forbes fetish? We ask because his latest hire, Caroline Waxler, has the business fortnightly on her resume — as does soon-to-depart Blodget employee Peter Kafka. Blodget, best known for his Silicon Alley Insider site, seems to fancy himself a business-blog mogul, running two other sites — Clusterstock and the Business Sheet. Waxler will edit the latter which, in a refreshing piece of honesty, explains, "We’re still in beta, which means we still suck." More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by EastCoastNinja: Owen- I thought that after doing a bunch of derivative articles using Alley Insider news over the last six months, you... 1 Responses | Other threads
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peter kafka
Murdoch-owned tech site steals Henry Blodget's top blogger
The latest hire in online tech outlets smacks of cannibalism. Silicon Alley Insider, the vanity blog vehicle of former Wall Street stock analyst Henry Blodget, has lost managing editor Peter Kafka to AllThingsD, the vanity blog vehicle of Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. Dow Jones makes for a steadier parent than AlleyCorp, the tech-startup holding company of DoubleClick cofounder Kevin Ryan. But one would think Swisher, who confirms the hire and says Kafka will start at the end of October, might have first raided the vast hordes of reporters working in the faltering medium of print before feeding on her own kind. Let's just hope she lets Kafka get out more.
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By Owen ThomasComment by Migrant Blogger: Looks like his porn stories will show up somewhere new more » | Other threads
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susan lyne
Silicon Alley blog reports on coworker's hire
Gilt Groupe, the invite-only high-end group-spelled-with-an-e-at-at-the-end e-commerce site you're not supposed to have heard of, got a new CEO today, former Martha Stewart CEO Susan Lyne. Cofounder Alexis Maybank, pictured here, will become chief strategist. Through AlleyCorp, DoubleClick cofounder Kevin Ryan owns both Gilt Groupe and Silicon Alley Insider, the tech blog which reported the news, citing "a source familiar with the situation," which we think is journalismspeak for "Kevin Ryan." Synergy! [Silicon Alley Insider] -
Tim the IT Guy
Media hacks compete for best nonworking Olympics links
So far, no one has published a workaround for YouTube's block on Americans trying to reach the site's beijing2008 channel. But lazy reporting and glib posts from reputable sites make it sound like the geeks (i.e. me) have solved the problem already. Wired, Silicon Alley Insider, and Om Malik's NewTeeVee are the worst offenders. I spent most of today actually trying their suggestions. I am obligated to report they're all worse than useless. Here's how each of them failed: More » -
new york, minute
Silicon Alley Insider publisher raises money
Silicon Alley Media, disgraced tech-stocks analyst Henry Blodget's recently formed blog collective, has raised a modest $1 million from wealthy investors, Tech Confidential reports. The A round's A list included Tacoda cofounder Dave Morgan and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz. With the proceeds, Blodget is hiring editors for two new sites: Clusterstock, a spreadsheet-heavy analysis site, and Business Sheet, a tabloidy take on business personalities. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Tnuc: ClusterStock: Because ClusterFuck was unavailable. more » | Other threads
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you're doing it wrong
Apple shareholders threaten Henry Blodget
After an interview with employee Dan Frommer, Silicon Alley Insider publisher Henry Blodget received a "threat" from an Apple shareholder who didn't like the pair's skepticism about the market for iPhone applications and the stock's performance. But rather than go after Blodget for shorting AAPL, why not mention that the analysis comes from a man who had to settle a fraud suit and was kicked out of the financial business? That seems easier. [Silicon Alley Insider]
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By Jackson WestComment by Jackson West: Actually, a Blodget suggests in his own writeup, the threat came from a shareholder who had a gang at hand.... more » | Other threads
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d6
Jason Calacanis refuses to answer twenty simple questions
With Silicon Alley Insider suggesting that Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis has a gambling problem, I figured it was time to take the intervention up a notch. Calacanis has endorsed workaholism in the past, leading me to believe that he doesn't take what psychologists have termed "process addiction" particularly seriously. So I sent him the standard twenty questions from Gamblers Anonymous. He was incredulous. "R u asking me to respond to these for a valleywag post?!?" [sic] I suggested he tally up the responses and send that instead — after all, what does he have to worry about? GA suggests seven or more "yes" answers is indicative of a gambling problem. And betting a company's future on raising a venture capital round or angling for a higher valuation ahead of a sale counts.
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By Jackson WestComment by raincoaster: @Rachel Marsden: True; however, tick, tick, tick. more » | Other threads
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separated at net worth
Henry Blodget, neat freak
Is disgraced stock analyst Henry Blodget the reincarnation of Howard Hughes? In an inadvertently revealing Silicon Alley Insider post explaining his dislike of Windows Seven's touchscreen features, Blodget's screaming germophobia is on full display.We never touch our PC screen, and we hate it when other people touch our PC screens.... We're not particularly anal, and we polish up our Blackberry every thirty seconds or so.... So excuse us if we don't jump up and down in excitement at the thought that people are going to feel better about jabbing their fat, greasy fingers into our PC screens.
What's particularly fascinating is how Blodget attempts to normalize his neurosis by using the first person plural. Polishing your BlackBerry that frequently isn't healthy, Hank.
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By Owen ThomasComment by raincoaster: @macbeach: If you love it THAT much you probably have to at least Wet Wipe the back of it a... more » | Other threads
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great moments in pr
Brooke Hammerling, online-video PR rep, weighs in on online-video audience debate
BrewPR's snacky flack Brooke Hammerling penned a guest column for Silicon Alley Insider, arguing that the Web video industry needs to come up with a strict viewership metric. Though she doesn't mention it in the piece, New York-based online-video startup NextNewNetworks is a Brew client. (It's disclosed, in tiny type, at the end.) We could ask why Henry Blodget is giving a self-interested company rep a soapbox, or why they couldn't fix the red eye in Hammerling's photo. But the real question is why Hammerling suddenly cares about online video analytics. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by WillClark: I think it's time for another Snacky or Flacky contest. more » | Other threads
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gary sharma
New Silicon Alley Reporter accuses "lovable scumbag" Jason Calacanis of spreading "baseless rumors"
Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis made his name running Silicon Alley Reporter back in the 1990s. You'd think Calacanis would be happy to hear that some guy named Gary Sharma has brought the Silicon Alley Report back to the Web. Nope. On his last trip to New York, Calacanis gleefully told a table full of reporters that Dow Jones, which bought the publication from Calacanis back in 2003 — was preparing to sue Sharma's project out of existence. Sharma denies the legal trouble. "Word on the street is that these are just baseless rumors being spread around by that lovable scumbag Jason Calacanis," Sharma tells us. "Maybe he's getting a lil antsy now that SAR 2.0 is getting rave reviews from the Silicon Alley community?" Asked to comment, Peter Kafka, managing editor of Silicon Alley Insider, a blog often confused with Calacanis's old rag, said: "Who?" -
rumormonger
Calacanis's latest blog blather: Silicon Alley Insider raised $12 million
At his Dim Sum 2.0 dinner in New York last night, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis congratulated Silicon Alley Insider blogger Dan Frommer on his boss's fundraising abilities. Calacanis said he'd heard Blodget raised $12 million for the New York tech blog. Frommer asked Calacanis if he meant $3 million to $5 million, as TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington reported yesterday. No, Calacanis said, he'd heard $12 million from one of the investors. More » -
blogging for dollars
Valleywag seeking $10 million among VC blog feeding frenzy
What is Michael Arrington smoking? His self-indulgent fantasy: All the bloggers should band together into a "dream team," owning equity in the joint venture. "Someone needs to pony up a big round of financing around an existing blog, or perhaps a new entity, and then start rolling them up into a big fat CNET crushing $200 million/year in revenue business," he writes. That existing blog he has in mind is obviously TechCrunch, though he never comes out and says it. What pushed him into this delusion? A rumor that Silicon Alley Insider is raising a $3 million to $5 million round and that PaidContent is also seeking more financing, a charge founder Rafat Ali doesn't exactly deny. Arrington doesn't want his competitors to raise money, because that will screw his ambitions for a big blog rollup. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by VizionQuest: Perhaps he just worried about Valleywag's surge to dethrone TechCrunch: [tomuse.com] Keep up the great work! more » | Other threads
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nerdfight
Blodget to Spitzer: Payback's a bitch!
Back in 2002, Eliot Spitzer, then New York's attorney general, published internal emails from Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget . Blodget was shown trashing stocks he had publicly touted. The SEC charged Blodget with fraud and eventually banned him from the securities industry for life. Now Blodget edits Silicon Alley Insider. Look who's publishing now.
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Comment by paulrocks: Be they a preacher or a pol -- just another scandal of the self-righteous. more » | Other threads
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google
New York reporters scooped on YouTube by blabbing blogger
Google hosted an event in Manhattan yesterday to pitch advertisers on YouTube. Silicon Alley Insider's Michael Learmonth tried to crash and got booted. The New York Times's Louise Story played nice and apparently got to stay, but later told readers the "bulk of the event" was "off the record." Apparently, neither tried Google search. Attendee Ian Schafer, CEO of a digital marketing agency, was happy to blog everything. More »
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Comment by joshuajcohen: Too bad Michael got booted. I was able to grab some footage from the event. Check it out:... more » | Other threads
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silicon alley insider
John Battelle welcomes Henry Blodget into snuggly embrace
Henry Blodget, editor of Silicon Alley Insider, has established himself as a connoisseur of male beauty. And John Battelle is a handsome man. He's also chairman of Federated Media, the online-ad network and paid friend to bloggers, which is more likely where the attraction lies. Blodget has publicly documented on his New York-based tech blog his struggles to find an ad model that works. At last, he has: Toss his banners in Battelle's lap. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by hblodget: Battelle is indeed a good-looking guy, but it wasn't these charms that drew us to him. It was the sacks... more » | Other threads
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caption contest
Blogger realizes "Attack of the Show" not radio program
Dan Frommer, a reporter for Silicon Alley Insider, makes his father proud with a turn as a talking head on G4 TV. New to our caption contests? The rules are simple: The best caption you submit in the comments becomes the new headline. Commenter kamra is the current winner. Can you top "Bloggers realizes "Attack of the Show' not radio program"? Photo by Michael Frommer, Dan's dad)
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By Owen ThomasComment by JasonHoellwarth: Damn...... the pink bunny outfit is at the cleaners. more » | Other threads
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nerdfight
Slide's funding brings out reporters' knives
Scoops are important to journalists. But do readers care? Some writers persist in thinking so. I can't remember ever seeing such backbiting over a humdrum funding announcement: Kara Swisher of AllThingsD scooped everyone last Friday with a rumor that Slide, Max Levchin's Web widget maker, was raising a big funding round. Sarah Lacy of BusinessWeek had more details of the $50 million round in an already-written column published to the Web after Swisher's post. Brad Stone of the New York Times weighed in that afternoon. And that's when the knives came out. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by eze: i wouldn't count slide out so soon. nobody knows how much slide's widget/application empire is worth, because nothing like this... more » | Other threads
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scams
How to get real Google bucks from fake press releases
Phony press releases have become the grist for the newest Internet profit mills. If you're like Chris Anderson and us, you don't read press releases. But several tech blogs were taken in by a dubious press release issued by a nonexistent company allegedly backed by real investors who may or may not have invested in several fake companies. Huh? Exactly. How the scam was uncovered, how it works, and how to avoid falling victim after the jump. More »
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By Tim FaulknerComment by merricklozano: Tim, our creditability and reputation is something we take seriously at PR Leap. The people behind these press releases paid... more » | Other threads
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henry blodget
Disclaimer of the week
In a post on Silicon Alley Insider about Gilt Groupe, a website which runs private couture sales for an invite-only clientele, disgraced stock analyst Henry Blodget includes the following disclaimer:Disclosure: Yes, yes, we know, we're conflicted up the wazoo here. Gilt's chairman Kevin Ryan is our chairman, Alexis Maybank, Mike Bryzek, and co are basically colleagues, etc. Whatever. You want pure objectivity without a hint of favoritism, emotion, or relationship conflict, visit TechCrunch.
He forgot one other disclaimer: Gilt Groupe CEO Alexis Maybank is a certified Silicon Alley fox. But far classier for Blodget to suggest he's swayed by the bonds of collegiality.
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By Owen ThomasComment by Mikelamb: "You want pure objectivity without a hint of favoritism, emotion, or relationship conflict, visit TechCrunch." I assume that was sarcasm.... more » | Other threads
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silicon alley insider
Peter Kafka needs to get out more
For the record, j'adore le Peter Kafka, managing editor of Silicon Alley Insider, the New York-based tech blog from disgraced stock analyst Henry Blodget. But seriously, girlfriend needs to loosen up. First of all, last time I was in town, the former Forbes writer totally ditched a little cocktail hour I threw in an East Village bar. Now, he freely admits to missing out the drunken, gossip-laden "debauchery" at a party thrown by TiVo and RealNetworks. I wasn't even there, and I got a story out of the party. I hear Blodget is a taskmaster. Hank, baby, for your readers' sakes: Let this guy roll into the office a little later. (Photo of Kafka by Glen Davis) -
blogging for dollars
Silicon Alley Insider ventures into the vaguely icky territory of sponsored-post advertising. It's one thing to thank one's sponsors by name, as is Valleywag's practice. Quite another to pen a gushing blog infomercial, in this case for a service called Vintage Filings, that looks like regular content. Surely Henry Blodget doesn't need the money badly enough to risk adding "disgraced tech blogger" to his list of unseemly epithets. [Innonate] More » -
blogging for dollars
Henry Blodget keeps teasing his critics
I noted yesterday how stock analyst turned blogger Henry Blodget was deftly yanking the chains of tech bloggers everywhere by merely asking, playfully, whether TechCrunch might be worth $100 million. Asking, mind you — he never once, in his original post, suggested he actually thought it was worth that much. In a followup post that's sure to engender more misplaced outrage, Blodget dives deeper into the numbers and suggests that yes, maybe some day in the future — by no means today — TechCrunch could, conceivably be worth $100 million. Conceivably. In the future. Then again, he's functioning under the delusion that the TechCrunch40 conference was a "major hit" instead of a rolling disaster, so who knows? On that line, at least, one hopes he was kidding, yet again. (Photo by Getty Images)
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By Owen ThomasComment by Jeremy: When's Mary Meeker starting her blog? Then the gang will all be here! more » | Other threads
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By Owen ThomasComment by Owen Thomas: @googoobaby: Something about how Google is there for you at every stage of your life, including holding your hair while... more » | Other threads
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silicon alley insider
Absurd assumptions about the iPhone
Dan Frommer of the Silicon Alley Insider sees the world as flat and static — at least when it comes to Apple's iPhone. Two days ago, he estimated that the iPhone wasn't meeting Apple's expectations based on the absurd assumption of flat sales — despite the obvious fact that sales will not be consistent over the time period analyzed. Between now and the end of 2008, Apple will experience two holiday shopping seasons when they have historically experienced huge surges in sales. Apple will also enter at least two new markets, Europe and Asia. And while a 3G version of the iPhone is unlikely to arrive in the US before the holidays, an upgrade of some kind is certain in the next 15 months... as are additional price cuts. All of which will produce sales increases and likely fuel further upward momentum to Apple's pricey phone. Not content with poor analysis of unit sales, Frommer is now extending his simplistic assumptions to iPhone profits. More » -
web 2.0
Bruce Judson puts the "bull" in "bully pulpit"
Bruce Judson, the Internet pioneer, is taking a turn at pretending to be a Web 2.0 expert, blogging on Henry Blodget's Silicon Alley Insider. Yes, the very same Bruce Judson, Time Warner Internet vet turned hawker of free crap we wrote about a week ago, who's pawning his reputation as a marketer and business leader from the first Web boom to pitch his new venture, Free for Today. Why, oh, why, is Blodget handing Judson a megaphone? The fallen star's ruminations on Web 2.0 are obvious and boring, and a thinly veiled pitch for his free-crap website. Ah, yes, this is the real Web 2.0: Garnering attention through self-promotion, no matter how spurious your ideas or transparent your motives. Maybe Judson gets it after all.
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By Tim FaulknerComment by AdMonster: I had the "pleasure" of working at Time Inc. during the years that Bruce Judson's influence there was at his... more » | Other threads
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great moments in pr
Google kicks out the nerd media
Google has summarily disinvited Dan Frommer, editor at New York-based tech blog Silicon Alley Insider, from its October 3 press soiree. The excuse? A Google spokesperson told him that "this event is very much consumer-focused and based on your coverage, the content does not seem aligned with your topic area." As if Google itself fits in better with the content produced by invited guests W and Women's Wear Daily? Right. Sounds like an insecure college freshman, trying to associate with the sorority girls and cut ties from longtime nerd friends, lest she seem uncool by association. More »
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Comment by mopar: Owen, what a crock. I mean this in the best possible way, of course. I was invited, so there.... more » | Other threads
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startups
Silicon Alley revealed as dank, smelly, empty space between buildings
Scott Heiferman, the organizer of the NY Tech Meetup, has canceled tonight's startup presentations, opting for a meet-and-greet instead. Why? He tells Silicon Alley Insider's Peter Kafka that he didn't want to "risk" the event "with presentations that some would find mediocre." Funny, "mediocre" seems to describe any event featuring a bunch of SoHo-dwelling, West-Chelsea-officed, Union-Square-Ventures-funded, trendy-cocktail-swilling, Prada-wearing, Balthazar-brunching, Valley-wannabe startups. On the bright side, attendees will have more time to knock elbows with Kafka and fellow filthy hack turned blogger Dan Frommer.
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By Owen ThomasComment by sdickert: Owen - you are a hack yourself - you only dream of being out here with us meat-eating, BBQ-loving, real-world,... more » | Other threads
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