Gawker
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twitterati
The Twitterati Drink Alone, or with Jenny 8. Lee
What's Twitter good for? Knowing that your life of quiet desperation is shared by the rich, powerful, or merely well-read, for starters. Steve Case, Sasha Frere-Jones, and Rob Corddry deserve twitty pity: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Golly Gee Holly: Why don't these people just text their twitter things?!? I have a blackberry but I don't have twitterberry. IT'S NOT... 4 Responses | Other threads
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layoffs
Attention, AOL Layoff Victims: Steve Case Is Sad
AOL, the failing Time Warner Internet unit, is laying off another 700 employees via emails alerting them to an "important meeting." Even the pink-slipping process is predictable now. And former CEO Steve Case? He's sad. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by spraytanman: Like most things in business - success happens by accident. Its what you do after that defines who you are. Steve... 4 Responses | Other threads
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acquisitions
WebMD bulks up as Revolution Health talks sale
Revolution Health, the brainchild of AOL founder Steve Case, is still in talks to sell its health portal to a rival, Everyday Health. The combination would have bested WebMD, the No. 1 health-site operator — until WebMD bought QualityHealth.com today. The Revolution-Everyday deal, meanwhile, could happen within a week — but is currently stuck on financing. Arranging the money to consummate the sale is proving difficult, with Wall Street more concerned with its own survival than the health of Case's startup venture. One way or another, it seems all but certain that Case's Revolution Healthwill end up sold, without much transformation to show for his troubles. More » -
acquisitions
Steve Case's troubled Revolution Health talks merger with rival
At last, an end is in sight for Steve Case's misadventure in the healthcare industry. Revolution Health, his health-information website, is in merger talks with Everyday Health, a better-run, New York-based rival with more Web traffic. The combination would have more traffic than WebMD. Three's a trend, isn't it? If the deal goes through, this will be the third time Case has dumped a company he mismanaged on someone else's shareholders. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by macbeach: Let's not forget AOL did REALLY well for a while. Also at the time of the TW Merger it was... 1 Responses | Other threads
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rumormonger
Revolution Health up for sale?
If AOL founder Steve Case is leading a revolution in healthcare, then Revolution Health is shaping up to be the Long March for this Mao Zedong of medicine. Workforce Management, an industry trade publication, reports that Revolution Health has hired Morgan Stanley to shop the company around. Brad Burns, a company spokesman, denies that Revolution Health, which operates a health-information website, is up for sale. Burns previously worked for WorldCom, so take his comment as you will. What is clear: Case, after cobbling Revolution together through a series of acquisitions, has already shown a willingness to sell it off in pieces. Extend Health, an insurance-brokering subsidiary of Revolution, sold part of the company for $15 million to outside investors a year ago. (Photo by christophercarfi)
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By Owen ThomasComment by healthguy: Revolution Health failed for one simple reason: their value proposition offered neither consumers nor marketers any value at all. They... more » | Other threads
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venture capital
Steve Case bets on the Facebook platform, just in time for the bubble to burst
Bitter widgetmakers may want you to believe venture capital for the Facebook platform is all dried up, but don't believe it. Not when there's visionaries like former AOL CEO Steve Case still around. Case has joined a $5 million funding round led by Grotech Ventures for widgetmaker Living Social. Living Social builds apps like BookSocial and BeerSocial for Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5 and Orkut that recommend products for their users based on their friend's tastes. On second thought, Case's investment may be the clearest market signal yet that investment money for widgets is soon to disappear altogether.
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Comment by Shadowlayer: The FB bubble is over, but not the entire industry's.. more » | Other threads
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online advertising
Is Steve Case on drugs? No, but that's the problem
Former AOL CEO Steve Case founded Revolution Health on some muddle-headed notion of using the Internet to transform healthcare. That dream has died, and what's left — an online-advertising network serving health-information websites — may not have much of a future, says WebMD veteran Josh Wildstein. Drugmakers' spending online actually dropped from 2006 to 2007. Healthcare sites have the same me-too content, licensed from a few prestigious sources like the Mayo Clinic, and they charge high rates for ads. But their ads don't deliver the only results that matter — increased prescriptions for name-brand pharmaceuticals. The sites also frustrate consumers, who end up trolling through pages of Google search results, finding answers on niche sites which are difficult for advertisers to reach. The end result: Pharmaceutical marketers buy cheap, untargeted ad impressions to drum up large numbers of customers instead of spending money on health sites. And we wonder why there are so many Viagra ads online.
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By Owen ThomasComment by TomNocera: To be fair to Steve Case, one must keep in mind that he currently has a little project underway called... more » | Other threads
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deathwatch
Steve Case's Revolution Health to lay off another 35 to 45, seek bailout merger
Following last month's layoffs, Revolution Health, the healthcare-transforming startup started by former AOL CEO Steve Case, will shrink yet more by the end of this month, a tipster tells us: More »
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Comment by saywho: This isn't really surprising considering the extreme lack of leadership and communication in the organization. I would assume that anyone... more » | Other threads
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rumormonger
Revolution Health lays off an entire business unit
Revolution Health, the company founded by former AOL Time Warner chairman Steve Case, has laid off its entire business-to-business unit, according to a tipster. In the rest of Revolution Health, there's little sign of its original mission — helping consumers lower healthcare costs. Instead, it's operating a series of vaguely health-related websites, and selling banner ads against them, a push for traffic for traffic's sake which began last year. But most recently, another source tells us, Revolution's pageview games have started to look desperate: More »
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By Jackson WestComment by jwoodywild: Revolution can position themselves as a media company or not. It doesnt matter. They have nothing unique that cant be... more » | Other threads
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cleantech
Vinod Khosla's Brazilian ethanol venture uses slave labor, just like most Valley startups we know
The Brazil Renewable Energy Company, or Brenco, was the target of the Brazilian Labor Ministry's slave-labor investigation unit last month. Brenco produces ethanol from sugarcane, which is more carbon-efficient than corn-based ethanol but incredibly labor-inefficient — cane farming is some of the hardest work on Earth. How did the company, backed in part by Vinod Khosla's VC firm, address this inefficiency? By paying workers less than a dollar an hour, packing them cheek-to-jowl in substandard living conditions, preventing them from leaving the unsanitary housing on their free time, feeding them poorly, and (rather ironically for an ethanol manufacturer) banning alcohol. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by matto: @Fidel on the Roof: I had Automotive Industry Cabal vs. Military Industrial Complex at even money- thanks for flipping the... more » | Other threads
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rumormonger
Revolution Health to acquire HealthTalk and SparkPeople?
Is Revolution Health showing signs of recovery? The health information site, launched by AOL founder Steve Case, seemed on its deathbed after laying off 60 earlier this fall. Now a tipster alerts us to two acquisitions Revolution Health will announce later this week. We're not sure if that's a sign of new life, or an acknowledgement that past startup buys have disappointed. More »
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Comment by jwoodywild: Here is the next big thing that will change healthcare and has come from "a garage". www.freemd.com more » | Other threads
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layoffs
Revolution Health pulls plug on 60
AOL founder Steve Case's Revolution Health will lay off 60 employees in the next 24 hours, according to an internal memo. The bloodletting comes a day earlier than Valleywag reported yesterday. Lowlights from the bloody memo after the jump. More »
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Comment by bbxv10: @bitmap80: Employees there were lucky to get paid. The checks were often cut WAY after the 30 days on the contract. There... more » | Other threads
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rumormonger
Revolution Health to lay off 70 this Thursday
A tipster tells us AOL founder Steve Case's Revolution Health continues to "hemorrhage cash" and that layoffs are coming to the company's D.C.-area workforce this Thursday. About 70 out of 250 employees will be let go, says the source. Apparently, the only revenue generator the company is its CarePages unit, a community website it acquired. More »
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Comment by bbxv10: @bluelines: All they did was pay Mayo a lot of money to repost articles that Mayo puts out for free. What makes... more » | Other threads
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valleywag calendar
Who will be the Ken Jennings of Web 2.0?
Study your trivia and get your answer buzzer ready, as there's a contest this evening at the Web 2.0 Summit. Nerdboys and geek girls, your life's in jeopardy, Web 2.0-style. More »
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Comment by mach1andy: Lots of stuff going on in NYC this week! I'm here for this and Sun's Startup Camp @ Startupcamp.org more » | Other threads
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revolution money
Former investors avoid new Steve Case venture
You may remember Steve Case from your spam-filled AOL inbox and your junk-CD-filled postal mailbox. The former CEO of AOL and now the head of the Revolution Health, a flailing healthcare startup, is giving it another go. His latest venture? launched Revolution Money, a nontraditional credit card combined with a PayPal clone. The former would be interesting if we didn't already have Visa and MasterCard, and the latter if we didn't have, well, PayPal. The basic sales pitch for the card is, alas, utterly flawed. Sure, it's cheaper for merchants, which may win it some acceptance among businesses. But since Visa and MasterCard make money by charging fees to sellers, not buyers, that price cut won't make any difference to consumers when they hit the mall. This obvious point is perhaps not lost on the star-studded investors Case attracted to his earlier venture. More »
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By wagger1Comment by SundhaGazelle: Actually, consumers actually pay over $400 worth of interchange fees every year. I'm such a believer in this company--on... more » | Other threads
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revolution health
Everyone's getting sick of Steve Case
Perhaps former AOL CEO Steve Case should get better insurance for his workers at Revolution Health. When they're not lying down on the job, employees at his poorly run startup targeting the healthcare industry are dropping like flies. Here's the latest word from an insider:On Wednesday, Tim O'Shaughnessy, one of the leading product managers, left along with 3 key developers to do their own startup. This is in addition to the departure of key lead developers last week that were laid off. During an employee lunch meeting today, the morale is at an all-time low.
Ah, but when other staffing plans fail, there's always nepotism. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by TheBloviator: /LMAO First rule of life: don't believe your own BS.Second rule of life: don't believe anyone else's. more » | Other threads
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lazy valleywag
Steve Case's Revolution Health looking sickly?
Former AOL CEO Steve Case has been aiming to turn the healthcare industry upside down with his startup Revolution Health. Instead, it seems, the company is the one getting shaken up. "Layoffs last Friday," says a tipster, who adds that two lead developers resigned yesterday, with a top product manager set to head out the door, too. Hardly a surprise, though, after the company just barely managed to scrape up enough money to buy its employees group-health policies. Anyone know more about Revolution Health's prognosis? Send in a tip. Update: We now hear that three out of four lead developers are now gone. This revolution will not be computerized, from the sound of things.
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By Owen ThomasComment by bbx10: Why would people pay $129 a year for info they could get for free? more » | Other threads
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revolution health
Steve Case's unhealthy workforce
Revolution Health, AOL cofounder Steve Case's new venture, promises to make picking health plans simpler for consumers. Its employees, on the other hand, are left with no choice at all: We're told that the company, despite being flush with venture capital,offersuntil recently offered no group health plan. A job listing at Revolution says the company is "constantly looking for new talent." If the benefits package is really so skimpy, it's no wonder. Heard anything else about working conditions at Case's company? Do tell. -
aol
AOL apology watch: We're sorry, we'll do it again.
Since AOL is apologizing like Bill Clinton at a war crimes museum, it seems time for a recap. AOL has made three recent apologies, none of which actually solved a problem: More »
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By Nick DouglasComment by Marc: On the positive side, at least they are consistent in the imaplusibility of their denials! more » | Other threads
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bill gates
Remainders: Bill Gates is Satan again
- The Wall Street Journal tries hard to find a contrarian view for Wired editor Chris Anderson's book, The Long Tail. Chris Anderson, amused, topples it like a sadist at a domino exhibition. [WSJ and The Long Tail]
- At the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit, YouTube founder Chad Hurley says he wants the company to stay independent. Since YouTube's still in the red and will depend on a sale to repay its investors, just add this to the pile of bullshit said at conferences. [ZDNet]
- Another conspiracy theorist has connected Microsoft's Bill Gates to Satan. Yawn. [Rense.com, Illustration]
- A top Digg user explains why he turned down Netscape manager Jason Calacanis's offer to defect — even for money. [tysonhy.com]
- Why did a Digg user get kicked from the site after posting a joke about social sites Digg and Reddit? [jgc.org]
- Steve Case said he was "sorry" for merging his AOL with Time Warner. But it was his best deal ever. [Broadcasting and Cable]
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aol
Morning news: Steve Case is sorry, five years after that means anything
- AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) pays $5.4 billion for ATI Technologies, which is about 5 times the fake valuation of YouTube and twice the fake valuation of Facebook. [NYT]
- One more score for the tiered Internet. The quality of the average Voice-over-IP call is falling, and not just because of the Vonage operator breathing heavily in the background. [CNET]
- AOL co-founder Steve Case tells Charlie Rose, "Yes, I'm sorry I did it," about merging with Time Warner in 2001. A quick check with every executive at AOL says yeah, they're sorry he did it too. [Reuters]
- Real estate site Zillow, another tool for pretending your house is worth more than it is, takes $25 million in its second round of funding. It has yet to make a profit. [SiliconBeat]
- A judge considers a $90 million Google clickfraud lawsuit; if advertisers win, they get credits to advertise with Google, thus ensuring a gravy train of recursive clickfraud lawsuits for life. [BusinessWeek]
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By Nick DouglasComment by eknirb: But how does Gerry Levin feel? On that deserted Tahiti island or wherever he is? more » | Other threads
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