Gawker: valleywag, anil dash

If Only Tiger Had Cheated At a More Opportune Moment

Ryan Tate — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:00:45 EST

A critic took issue with Tiger Woods' timing, of all things; a tech exec threw down against Barry Diller; and Olivia Munn gave Mr. Thunderstorm something to wet. The Twitterati were stepping to 'em.

Touré's forthcoming listicle "The Five Absolute Best Times to Cheat on Your Wife" will be published in the February 2010 edition of Esquire, along with a companion internet video, "Listen, I Didn't Really Write That, Honey, I Swear, There Must Have Been, Like, a Production Error, Or Something."

After shaming Google's CEO, Twitter's self-appointed mogul bully, Anil Dash, set his sights on IAC's Barry Diller.

You've heard of "'Fuck Me' boots?" Geek TV godess Olivia Munn has, "fuck you, rain, I'm bearing skin" boots.

Between the unwelcome headwinds and frigid homecoming, flitty Silicon Valley flack Brooke Hammerling discovered it's hard being bicoastal.

Milo Yiannopoulos gave newly-reformed teetotaler (and fellow Brit tech writer) Paul Carr some chaos for his birthday. Hopefully not that variety that stains the carpet and passes out on the couch.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

You Know Who Else Was a Grammar Nazi?

Ryan Tate — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:21:17 EDT

Jake Tapper needled the White House over word usage; one blog company taunted another over font usage; and an editor got heckled over link usage. The Twitterati forgot their history.

Forbes' Lacey Rose was party to a romantic moment. The sort of romantic moment you have to testify in court about.

Six Apart's Anil Dash took a swipe at Tumblr's large fonts. OH SNAP, David Karp.

Web-vid host Molly McAleer finally got her money's worth out of that intensive hula hoop class.

ABC News' Jake Tapper got more than a little passive aggressive with Robert Gibbs, and we definitely denoticed.

Macworld's Jason Snell said something about loving communism forever, or at least that's what our limbic system tells us.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Have You Been Facesquatting?

Foster Kamer — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:37:39 EDT

Yes, Facesquatting: proportionally, the dirtiest term possible for the most inane thing it could be applied to, which, in this case, is taking a Facebook user name that's not yours. And now it's a hysterical, brainless internet meme.

The story behind the term, coined by blogger Anil Dash - who, with the Twitter proliferation of it, wants to see it used on CNN - goes something like this: as you might've heard, on Friday night, the "Nerd Reckoning" occurred. Facebook started allowing people to have "usernames" on the site to allow people more direct access to your (more individualized) profile by having a distinct URL (i.e. "facebook.com/yourname"). Unfortunately, the username is permanent. But not unfortunately, because hilarity ensues. Thus, the internerds found a new cute way to mess with each other by "squatting" on certain names. You could be like this young man, who chose something slightly less refined than his actual name to fit his profile.

Anyway. This is is DESTROYING FRIENDSHIPS, too. Take, for example, this young fellow, who decided it would be cute to take his friend's name.

So sad. Outrage! And hilarity. Anyway: Facebook is still fun, sometimes. I was going to do this to my profile but then realized that the change was permanent, though if any of you take it and put a silly picture up, I'll give you $5.

Kindle Thief Tortures Owner with Crappy Book Buys

Ryan Tate — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:50:57 EDT

The Twitterati ended the week punchy: Kevin Rose was plundering sofware; Anil Dash gleefully promoted the term "Facesquatting" and Mark Glaser lost his Kindle to a teenaged girl.

PBS' Mark Glaser watched helplessly as a thief ruined his Amazon recommendations for the next 18 months.

Digg's Kevin Rose tried to bait Steve Jobs into a swordfight.

Six Apart blogging pimp Anil Dash opened up a second, linguistic line of attack against the mainstream media.

Revision 3's Patrick Norton was officially called a frightening gadget freak by the Feds.

Celebrity gossip Bonnie Fuller gleefully took credit for one of the most obvious casting decisions in reality-TV history.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

The Comical Facebook Land Rush You Should Ignore

Ryan Tate — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:27:47 EDT

Sad Web nerds plan to stay in front of their computers late Friday night to obtain short, easy-to-remember Facebook addresses ("facebook.com/sadwebnerd"). It's the start of a geeky land grab! But true geeks know why this is stupid.

"You can also register a real domain name that you can own, instead of just having another URL on Facebook," Six Apart blogging evangelist Anil Dash reminds everyone in a satirical rundown of how the Facebook frenzy will unfold.

Twitter hysteria will, of course, make an appearance:

June 13, 12:45am: TechCrunch discovers that one of its writers can't get his preferred spelling for his name, and notices that registrations in the system are running a bit slow. A Twitter search reveals four other people discussing the same problems, and one person that can't get to the feature at all. The phrase "The Facebook Username debacle" is first used, and becomes the preferred sobriquet for the feature forevermore. 70% of commenters mention that "Facebook Username" can be abbreviated "FU", and each thinks he is the first to think of it.

June 13, 1:00am: #FUFacebook becomes a Trending Topic on Twitter. People who are presently whining about how expensive it is to buy a new iPhone because they bought a new iPhone last year will have the chance to see how obnoxious and overprivileged they look, but will not take the opportunity.

June 13, 9:00am: The first mainstream coverage of the feature happens in the New York Times, which includes a one-line mention of the launch in a lengthy feature about Twitter's Verified Accounts. The story includes a colorful illustration of Kanye West, but omits any mention that you can also register a real domain name that you can own, instead of just having another URL on Facebook.

Funny — and, probably, predictive.

(Image via)

Apple Keynote Reimagined by the Twitterati

Ryan Tate — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:09:44 EDT

Anil Dash, Glenn Feischman and Nick Douglas created a parallel, imaginary Apple conference and Xeni Jardin met a very strange CNN producer. Life was surreal for the Twitterati.

Six Apart's Anil Dash made a joke for people who remember 1986.

Tech writer Glenn Fleischman seemed to enjoy his heroic service in the peanut gallery.

Professional Twitter compiler Nick Douglas immediately grasped the real-world implications of Apple's shiny new toy.

Engadget's Joshua Topolsky made us wish we were more up to speed on Gawker Media gossip.

Xeni Jardin had a surreal CNN experience not involving Lou Dobbs or Anderson Cooper.

Jake Tapper engaged in passive-aggressive tweeting.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Citizen journalists rush to fill Internet's shortage of A-lists

Paul Boutin — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:00:00 EDT

I blame Guy Kawasaki. Ten days after the relentless listmaker joined the advisory board of Vancouver-based citizen journalism hub NowPublic, the site published a link-baiting "The 50 most influential people in New York." We've had this piece in our inboxes since Friday morning, but we couldn't figure out how to get anyone in the Valley to care about a list topped by Noah Brier and Jeff Jarvis. More interesting is me-blogger Anil Dash's take on the genre: "First and foremost, organizations create these lists to promote their own authority." Exactly. We've been pitched to do a Valleywag 100 or Valleywag 40 or whatever by consultants who crank out marketing events for a living. But they balk when we ask for a deck of playing cards emblazoned with the faces of 52 People We Want Gone.

Six Apart executive fails to job-hop, follow other Silicon Valley rules

Owen Thomas — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:20:00 EDT

What's wrong with Anil Dash? As of today, the New York blogger, Six Apart's vice president of evangelism, has been at the San Francisco-based blog-software company for five years. Dash, the company's first employee, is one of its largest individual shareholders, but he's mostly vested by now. Why stick around? In Silicon Valley, the custom is to job-hop, to continuously optimize one's career for maximum gains. In staying loyal to Six Apart cofounders Ben and Mena Trott, Dash is betraying one of the industry's unspoken rules. No wonder so many of the ruthless careerists who populate tech companies find him grating. The concept that one might be vested in something other than stock options is alien to them.

Six Apart consummates Apperceptive acquisition, fecund pair already preggers with yet another ad network

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:00:00 EDT

As a part of a new "blogging services" strategy, blog software firm Six Apart has acquired social media applications builder Apperceptive and launched a new ad network. SAI questions whether the world needs another ad network. It doesn't. But we also wonder about Six Apart's timing. Why not launch the ad network during Ad:tech a week earlier? The Moscone Center crowd might have liked to lay some bets on some SXSW-style kickball action organized by publicly snarky, privately earnest Six Apart marketing guru Anil Dash. All we got were booth babes in fishnets.

Filthy rich Matt Mullenweg calls rival "dirty"

Owen Thomas — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:00:35 EDT

Automattic, Matt Mullenweg's blog-tools startup, is readying an upgrade to its WordPress software this week. Anil Dash of Six Apart took the occasion to let WordPress users know they can upgrade to his company's Movable Type instead. It's a move straight out of Oracle's handbook. But Mullenweg freaked out, calling the post "desperate and dirty." Dash responded by charging Mullenweg with "slander." Some are under the delusion that this nerdfight is about software. It's not. It's about money.

Specifically, Mullenweg's money. Automattic recently raised $29.5 million in venture capital — bringing its total raised past Six Apart. The Automattic deal was unusual: Some of the money went directly to Mullenweg, and a handful of other employees, instead of to his company. Automattic's investors, in other words, partially bought him out. A failed bidder for Automattic has been going around saying that Mullenweg's personal take was around $20 million.

Why buy Mullenweg out? VCs normally like to keep founders' incentives in line with their own, so everyone's shooting for a big payday. One might think showering a founder with cash ahead of an IPO or acquisition might be a sign that he's valued. Actually, it's the opposite: Making Mullenweg rich before eveyrone else is his investors' way of saying they don't care if he takes a hike.

Mullenweg surely realizes this. As satisfying as it might be to check his bank account, it has to be frustrating to realize he's not deemed relevant to Automattic's future. And that, more than anything, is what must prompt him to lash out at his chief rival.

Julia Allison crashes SXSW, explains it all

Melissa Gira Grant — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:17:58 EDT

Professional funnylady and amateur gossip Heather Gold just invited Julia Allison, professional gossip and amateur tech event crasher, onto her panel on — ha, ha — Gossip. "Explain to Shaila [Dewan, New York Times correspondent] what you do again," asks Heather, "since her coverage is of real disasters and not the Internet." Her response?

Provided by an audience member: "How much did you pay Julia, Owen, to come up here and make Valleywag more sympathetic?"

Update: The audience is now actually liveblogging our liveblogging. We stand by our "slutty, cheap" headline about her panel crashing, including the photo accompanying of the official SXSWi admittance badge hanging around her neck.
As for the rest of the crowd?

Six Apart's Anil Dash thinks it's all of our fucking faults.

Lane Becker of Get Satisfaction says "this was the best SXSW panel ever" —

— and then thanks Valleywag emeritus Nick "Leave Julia Alone!" Douglas for running that hot tub photo years back.

SXSW's a real kick

Owen Thomas — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:50:09 EST

Honestly, does anyone come to SXSW Interactive for work? There are just enough earnest Web-design panels to make it a plausible tax writeoff. Anil Dash of blog-software maker Six Apart gets it: For years, he's been organizing a kickball game in a park near the Austin Convention Center. Sadly, no fights broke out over his calls as umpire.

Six Apart founders' heir presumptive

Owen Thomas — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:48:48 EDT

Who is Penelope Trott? According to a Twitter sent by Six Apart executive Anil Dash, a close confidante of Ben and Mena Trott, the founders of the blog-software company, she's made him "smile all day." We can only guess that Penelope is the name of the Trotts' long-expected offspring. If so, congratulations. We await the day when Mena and Ben bring their daughter to work and declare, "Some day, all of this will be yours. Well, except for the parts we sold off to our venture capitalists."

Silicon Valley's baby boom

Owen Thomas — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:45:23 EDT

I never intended for the blogger-baby story, which began with the birth of Ollie Kottke to A-list bloggers Jason Kottke and Meg Hourihan, to become quite such a saga, but news has a way of happening. Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield are no longer expecting a baby — they have a daughter, Sonnet Beatrice Butterfield, according to fellow Yahoo executive Bradley Horowitz. Here's the rundown on the rest of the couples mentioned in yesterday's baby poll, which — well done, readers — you guessed correctly.

Alaina Browne and Anil Dash The foodblogger and Six Apart executive are not pregnant, though Dash has been looking a little chunky.

Heather Powazek Champ and Derek Powazek: Flickr's community manager and the famous Web designer are not pregnant.

Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield: Flickr's cofounders made no secrecy of Fake's pregnancy, which ended yesterday with the safe delivery of a newborn daughter.

Jennifer Granick and Brad Stone: The lawyer and New York Times reporter are expecting, and are telling people about it.

Maryam and Robert Scoble: Would you really expect Robert Scoble, whose blogger wife, Maryam, is pregnant, not to blog about the fact?

Now we all know: Ben Trott proved so irresistably hot that his wife and fellow Six Apart cofounder, Mena, found herself in a family way. Until recently, she'd been trying to keep the fact private.

To the pregnant couples: Heartfelt congratulations and best wishes. To Fake and Butterfield: Mazel tov! To Browne, Dash, and the Powazeks: Get cracking! Valleywag is going to need readers in 2025.

(Photos by Anil Dash, edyson, granick, jacksonwest, Scott Beale / Laughing Squid, and simoncast)

Let's play hide the baby

Owen Thomas — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 16:26:02 EDT

Last week, the birth of a son (and future blogger) to Jason Kottke and Meg Hourihan reminded us of another famous Web personality who ~~tried~~had a colleague try, bizarrely, to claim that the mom-to-be's pregnancy was "off the record." (Memo to other would-be secret-keepers: "Off the record" is always a matter of mutual agreement between reporter and source, not something you can declare unilaterally.) We asked for guesses on who it was, and you had lots of good ones. Now it's time to vote, picking out the baby-hiders from among these glamorous A-list bloggers. Pictures of the people you've speculated about, and a poll, after the jump.

The contestants: Alaina Browne and Anil Dash, Heather Powazek Champ and Derek Powazek, Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield

Jennifer Granick and Brad Stone, Maryam and Robert Scoble, and Ben and Mena Trott

(Photos by Anil Dash, edyson, granick, jacksonwest, Scott Beale / Laughing Squid, and simoncast)

I hate April Fool's Day on the Internet

Nick Douglas — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 07:55:05 EDT

NICK DOUGLAS — TechCrunch acquired FuckedCompany, eh? Ha...ha? As Anil Dash said one year ago, "Your April Fool's Day joke sucks." Sure, kudos to TechCrunch for exploiting some timing, but what website hasn't run a press release on April 1 announcing a fake merger or a radical change of focus? But the problem with celebrating April Fool's Day online isn't just the three or so tired jokes. It's that on the Internet, every day is April Fool's Day. This is the world of flying penis attacks, cartoons on the backs of business cards, and cops raiding a camboy's house. April Fool's Day does to the Internet what Valentine's Day does to love: tarts it up, fakes it out, and leaves us disappointed. So put down your ironic press release, pick your own day for fun, and go raise some real hell.

Serious Eats Recruits the A-List

lock — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 18:30:43 EST

LOCKHART STEELE — You might not have heard of the new foodsite Serious Eats yet, but at the rate that noted food journalist Ed Levine is stockpiling blog talent, you probably will sooner or later. (Or, if you choose to keep reading, now! Thirty-second backstory: Levine, recognizing that his vision for a next-generation version of foodie message board Chowhound would require some serious tech and editorial chops, brought in Blogger.com founder Meg Hourihan as a consultant a few months back alongside popular food bloggers such as Adam Kuban and The Amateur Gourmet, each of whom contribute to the site and participate in an ad network on their personal blogs. Serious Eats formally launched earlier this month.)

Today, we hear Levine has hired Alaina Browne, a MuleDesign vp and one of the first food bloggers, to be Serious Eats' general manager. She'll be moving back to New York City from San Francisco at some point soon. Which means what for her husband, blogging software Six Apart vp/good guy Anil Dash? Well, the slug on the top of the native New Yorker's personal blog today reads, "I'm coming back like Jay-Z." Hmmm.

Serious Eats [seriouseats.com]

From the Vault: Six Apart VP spammed for a job

Nick Douglas — Wed, 24 May 2006 10:00:00 EDT

A job-hunting reader stumbled across this blurb while browsing Vault.com's career search literature. The screenshot above comes from a resume-writing guide written in 2003, just around when A-list blogger Anil Dash got his VP job at Six Apart.

Granted, no resume, cover letter or not, got Anil his job — he was already a friend of the blogging company's founders, the Trotts.

Six Apart Milestones [Six Apart, 2003]

iPod Hi-Fi boombox: The Valley Weighs In

Joel — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 14:18:07 EST

Six Apart's Anil Dash:

——————————— 11:06 am ———————————
Anil Dash: D batteries?!
Anil Dash: what is this, 1986?
Anil Dash: i'll go tell radio raheim his ipod has arrived

Geek pickup lines from Anil, Om, and others

ndouglas — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 14:47:18 EST

Geeks are the best lovers — and not just because of those toned finger muscles from twelve-hour typing days. They're sweet-talkers too. Here are pick-up lines submitted by some of the Valley's smoothest operators.

Anil Dash (VP, Six Apart): "Baby, I'd like to acquire you like I'm Yahoo."
Nancy Einhart (senior editor, Business 2.0): "I've been told my compensation package is quite ample."
Om Malik (blogger and senior writer, Business 2.0): "Baby, you can flash my router any day!" (GIGAOM BONUS: "Your office or mine?")
Ben Brown (founder, Consumating): "Wanna cyber?"