Gawker: valleywag, ali partovi

The Facebook Faithful Turn Against Mark Zuckerberg's Redesign

Owen Thomas — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:22:06 EDT

When will Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wake up and realize he made an idiotic mistake by copying Twitter? The Facebook-loving masses loathe the new look — as do Facebook's best pals in Silicon Valley.

The redesign is built around a new "stream" of status updates. It closely mimics the "timeline" feature of Twitter, a much smaller service which, like Facebook user, allows people to post short messages which are then broadcast to friends. But in adopting Twitter's simplified look, Facebook threw out or hid a whole host of features users have grown used to. (Try finding upcoming events, for example, or looking for updates on new friends people have made.)

A Facebook application built to poll users on the design is running 94 percent against the new design, with some 716,000 "no" votes against 44,000 "yes" votes.

One might argue that Zuckerberg didn't do the design to please the lowest common denominator of users, but instead was trying to win over the cognoscenti of Silicon Valley, who have been buzzing nonstop about Twitter. If so, he missed that target badly, too.

Facebook has a special program called "Great Apps" to recognize the best third-party add-ons to the social-networking sites. The favored few include iLike, a music app, and Causes, an app built by a startup called Project Agape which helps people rally their friends to various social issues.

Both have close ties to Facebook: Marc Bodnick, an influential Valley investor who sits on iLike's board, is the brother-in-law of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Project Agape is backed by former Facebook president Sean Parker, who still owns an estimated 5 percent stake in the company.

But guess who's been dissing Facebook's redesign on Facebook? iLike CEO Ali Partovi and Project Agape's Joe Green. Green recently wrote:

The stream does not out-Twitter Twitter and under-Facebooks Facebook.

Partovi snarkily noted that the new design inspired him to join Twitter — and employees at Slide, another Facebook-app maker, applauded his wit:

And mind you, these are people who make a living off Facebook. If they hate it, what friends will Zuckerberg have left?

SXSW, the Conference for Julia Allison and Other People Lacking Real Jobs

Scott Kidder — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 18:00:00 EDT

What recession? More than 10,000 revelers are expected for this year's SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas this week. With no real work at hand, they're hitting the parties hard — especially the unofficial ones.

Take last night, for example. The conference's official happy hour was packed, while the cocktail party hosted by Break Media, CollegeHumor, and other panelists from the "Comedy on Television and the Web" panel was far more relaxed. Attendees included CollegeHumor's Ricky Van Veen and The Office's BJ Novak. In between buying dozens of Kamikaze shots, Break Media CEO Keith Richman complimented Mahalo's Jason Calacanis's poker game. (Calacanis is a noted gambler, so much so that we sometimes wonder if he might have a problem.)

Break Media CEO Keith Richman, former Valleywag editor Nick Douglas, and New York writer and comedienne Caroline Waxler

We arrived at Digg's Second Annual Big Digg Shindig at Stubb's BBQ too late to see the live Diggnation taping — though we hear it was packed shoulder to shoulder — but just in time to see fanboys mob Diggnation host Kevin Rose and dispensable sidekick Alex Albrecht for autographs en masse.

NY Tech Meetup organizer, proven wantrepreneur, and host of The Interwebs Nate Westheimer

iLike's Ali Partovi and Hype Machine's Anthony Volodkin

Valleywag alumna and Boffery cofounder Melissa Gira Grant with Automattic's Matt Mullenweg

After a stop at an impromptu Next New Networks party, we headed to the Driskill Hotel. Microcelebrity egoblogger Julia Allison was flanked by fans who showed up after she sent a message on Twitter seeking reassurance of her self-importance. She has actual fans! Three of them!

Michael Arrington didn't even make Vanity Fair's kiddie-table list

Owen Thomas — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:40:00 EDT

This weekend's San Jose Mercury News profile of TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, so obsequiously flattering that some wondered whether the writer was auditioning for a job at the tech blog, included an inadvertent slam. Evidence of Arrington's importance: According to TechCrunch marketing VP Sarah Ross, Arrington was considered for Vanity Fair's "New Establishment" power list, but didn't make the final cut. So he's sort of famous, right? Just one problem with that theory.

If Arrington was, as his flack claims, considered and discarded from the main list, why didn't he show up on Vanity Fair's "Next Establishment," a collection of up-and-coming also-rans? Startup types like Ali and Hadi Partovi, the cofounders of music widget iLike, appeared there, though they're pretty much unknown outside the Valley. In this beauty contest, Arrington didn't even get the consolation prize. (Photo by Maria Avila/San Jose Mercury News)

Once again, Vanity Fair leaves geeks at the kids' power table

Owen Thomas — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Preeminent among the magazine world's kingmaking power lists is Vanity Fair's New Establishment, which appears in the October issue — on newsstands in L.A. and New York today, but not in the Bay Area for another six days. Silicon Valley gets similar short shrift: The names who make it there are predictable bigs like Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, or Hollywood-crossover types like Jeff Skoll, eBay's first employee turned movie producer. Walt Mossberg, now employed by New Establishment perennial Rupert Murdoch, also squeaked in. The consolation prize Vanity Fair offers: Its "Next Establishment" list, reserved for the likes of Twitter's Ev Williams. It's a marvelous piece of New York media trickery — flatter the geeks by making them feel included, but corral them into a side room so the real power brokers aren't offended by comparison. True, the "Next Establishment" suggests that these are people who might matter in the future. But in saying that, Vanity Fair's editors are also sending the message that right here, right now, its "Next" nominees are nobodies. On this year's list:

Wendi Deng Murdoch, MySpace China
Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, MySpace
Max Levchin, Slide
Robin Li, Baidu
Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos
Elon Musk, SpaceX
Ali and Hadi Partovi, iLike
Mika Salmi, MTV
Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh
Quincy Smith, CBS
Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times
Peter Thiel, Clarium Capital
Evan Williams, Twitter
Andrew Zolli, PopTech

iLike a good mustache, don't you?

Owen Thomas — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 21:24:08 EDT

ATHERTON — I'm told I left the party too early, but once Third Eye Blind started playing, Thursday night's iLike bash was pretty much over for me. Don't get me wrong — I like Third Eye Blind. It's right in tune with my utterly bland and more than slightly gay musical tendencies. But this is exactly why I will never, ever use a service like iLike, which makes a Facebook app that allows you to reveal your musical taste, or lack thereof, to your friends by posting songs, and find people with similar tastes by seeing who's going to concerts. Here's the thing: I know my taste in music is egregiously bad. I don't want to advertise the fact to the world, and if anything, I want to meet people who specifically dislike the music I listen to. That's all right, though — what I really wanted to listen to was the buzz in the room.

As I walked into the swank backyard of Marc Bodnick, the Elevation Partners managing director who is, unlike private-equity colleagues Bono and Roger McNamee, not a rock star, I was instantly handed a mango margarita and surrounded by men with mustaches. "What is this? The Edge?" I thought to myself. But it turns out that the Castro-conformist facial-hair regime wasn't the result of the gay mafia; no, it was just one of those Silicon Valley workplace motivational schemes gone horribly wrong. iLike CEO Ali Partovi abstained, but twin brother Hadi, the company's COO, joined in. He's in the upper left of the above collage, joined by various employees.

Snacky but control-freaky PR doyenne Brooke Hammerling tried to stop me from taking pictures, but I snuck away, whipped out of the camera, and went crazy documenting the iLike team's unfortunate facial hair. They even offered to supply a disposable razor and shaving cream so I could convert my goatee to the preferred look. I declined.

The party was ostensibly for iLike, but there was a big contingent of Facebookers, pumped from their second ultimate-frisbee win against Google. Founder Mark Zuckerberg showed up, and we made small talk about his sister Randi's burgeoning online video career. Then I sat down to dinner with Ron Conway, the angel investor, who affected a lack of concern about the meltdown in the markets. He did seem a bit distracted, though. Could the rumors be true that he just lost a big local deal to out-of-town venture capitalists?

Speaking of power VCs, as I was talking to Conway, VentureBeat blogger Matt Marshall pointed out semiretired Kleiner Perkins partner Vinod Khosla to Eric Eldon, one of his writers. It was a really good turnout — especially considering that Bodnick and iLike were competing with a private, but well-attended, August Capital event just down Sand HIll Road. I'd tell you more, but much of the night was off the record. Good thing, too, as I had one too many mango margaritas.