There was chatter in recent months the bi-coastal Dorsey (pictured) might plant his forthcoming venture in his second home base, New York, or even in his childhood home of St. Louis ("St. Louis will play a very large part in its story," he said of the startup last month).

But we hear Dorsey's been hunting for office space in San Francisco, Twitter's stomping grounds. He's hinted at as much on his Twitter stream: "I think we just found awesome office space," he wrote, just a couple of hours before he was "standing outside the... office" of SF-based Zendesk.

Dorsey's new startup is in "stealth mode." Since that's just Valleyspeak for being coy, we still know plenty about the company: it would enable person-to-person electronic payments via iPhone, MG Siegler wrote in TechCrunch this past spring, and the company has been awaiting regulatory approval, according to the St. Louis Business Journal.



It's a good idea; in fact programmer Max Levchin created the same capability for the Palm Pilot, the iPhone's old ancestor, before he and his co-founders expanded the idea into the financially successful internet-wide payment system PayPal.

So why is Dorsey framing his payments company as a new iteration of his old microblogging startup Twitter, of which he remains chairman? Dorsey told a St. Louis audience his company would have "similar ideas" as Twitter but "in a completely different industry," according to Nick Lucchesi of the Riverfront Times alt weekly. Is Dorsey hinting at additional publishing capabilities no one knows about yet?

More likely, the man who has said he would "never leave Twitter" is just extracting some free hype from a brand that clearly remains his baby, as far as Dorsey is concerned. In this regard, the prototype Twitterer thus remains the quintessential Twitterer: always self promoting.

(Pic by Esther Dyson)

Dot-com address acquisition is a dubious vestige of the first internet boom, when branding reigned supreme over profits and functionality, before entrepreneurs realized people would just look for them on Google. It was also Foursquare's first use of a $1.35 million investment from Fred Wilson's Union Square Ventures and O'Reilly AlphaTech; the software company tells Business Insider it couldn't have switched to foursquare.com from playfoursquare.com without the seed capital.

Investors obviously weren't deterred by the Google theft rumors, either. Some people inside the Googleplex believed Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley launched the iPhone service with code from Dodgeball, which Google bought from him in 2005 and then shut down. Crowley apparently told people at this year's South by Southwest conference the same thing, reasoning that Google wouldn't mind since it wasn't using the code anyway. It seems a safe bet that either Crowley was right or the rumors were wrong, since it's hard to imagine O'Reilly and Union Square Ventures sinking in money if Google were poised to sue.

The incentive to dispose of — or ignore — the issue would have been strong; the iPhone bubble is fast inflating, and your typical venture capitalist hates to be left out of a good hype cycle.

(Pic: Crowley, by See-ming Lee)

CocoPerez.com has been exposed in dribs and drabs; the website Evil Beet snuck past its password protection, then the website became freely available for maybe half an hour, now it's back to being password protected.

The site is meant to be more advertiser-friendly, and consequently finds Hilton doodling fewer crude captions on pictures. But his nasty side shows through sometimes, as in this caption:

Then there's this sarcastic headline, complete with Hilton's trademark double exclamation points:

But there's also analytical rigor! Evil Beet noticed that Hilton has been reposting items written for his old site, expanded with more "analysis." Below is a post about Harvard University's obnoxious new clothing line. On PerezHilton.com, the coverage ended with, "This is all fine and well, but there is one lingering question… why???" On CocoPerez.com, it ends,

This is all fine and well, but there is one lingering question: why?? This is from so far left field. We would understand if The New School or RISD or any number of artistic/fashion focused schools launched a line - it would still be unusual but at least a logical progression. But this?? This is just so random. Especially since Harvard isn't exactly thought of as the apex of fashion. This is like Janet Reno announcing she's launching a line of lingerie. You just can't get your head around it because it's so…bizarre.

Well, at least they've got our attention!

It is for this value-added piercing insight that the new site is apparently sponsored by Gap. We'd be surprised if many more sugar daddies sign on: Hilton's biggest advantage has been that he'll say anything, no matter how tasteless. But now he wants to make bank by playing nice, leading to muddles like CocoPerez.

We're just out here promoting Radio Shack, or uh, The Shack, whatever you want to call it, you know. Anyhow we have to sit out in public talking to webcams all day, give us a fucking break.

Take GQ. The men's magazine was once content to throw its stories onto a slush pile called men.style.com, placing the articles next to cut-rate online ads. Then GQ's print advertising dried up, and corporate sibling Wired got a fancy new website. Suddenly the magazine is reviving GQ.com and is killing off its old dumping ground, Men.Style.Com.

Details and Vogue are also going to start doing their own Web publishing, meaning that dumping ground sites like Style.com and Epicurious.com, which have already started firing people, are not long for this world. Reports Ad Age:

Editors who were aloof to the web when Conde Nast started pursuing its current digital strategy a decade ago now chafe at not controlling their own web destinies, and cast jealous eyes on the millions spent on the now-shuttered Portfolio.com and the remake of Wired.com.

At long last, Condé Nast, a company that sells its intimate understanding of culture, fashion and lifestyles, has discovered that the internet is a big thing. And all it took was mass layoffs and an advertising depression!

Why is Hilton, real name Mario Lavandeira, so eager to trade his cock drawings for product placement? Perhaps because of the purported success of Microsoft's Wonderwall, a mostly toothless collection of pretty celebrity pictures that is browsed by scrolling sideways. A buzzy article in the New York Times touted Wonderwall's traffic and blue-chip advertisers and positioned it as a tame antidote to Hilton.

So Perez is trying to go blue-chip? That's almost unfathomable; the blogger's greatest asset remains his low-rent bitchiness and vulgarity. The only question is whether he figures that out before or after a fruitless effort to out-slick and out-friendly Microsoft. It, will, at least, be comical to watch.

You'll recall Dana as the report who parted ways with a plum new job at the New York Times in 2007 after joking she was going to "kick [future colleague] Bill Carter's ass." She later did kick Carter's ass, at the Wall Street Journal, except with a scoop about Katie Couric that never came true. Whoops! (In fairness, it could be argued that Couric was going to leave the Evening News after the election, as Dana reported, but was aided by her devastating interviews with VP nominee Sarah Palin, interviews that may have shaped the course of the election.)

Media reporter Dana has perhaps grown more sophisticated with time, at least judging by changes in her facade. Compare the chic woman in the headcut up top to the t-shirted girl in the picture at left, disseminated in 2006 (via). (UPDATE: Dana "hates" the headcut, see bottom of post.)

The new headcut at least represents a clueful bit of marketing for Speakeasy, which the Journal doesn't seem to know what to do with. WSJ.com's managing editor can't even decide whether to call it a "blog," preferring the term "real-time column," terminology as charmingly anachronistic as "horseless carriage," as Steve Yelvington pointed out.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.And the blog's — er, column's — content hasn't yet lived up to the breezy, indiscreet tone implied by its logo, which features a Martini olive; or to the mission as it's apparently been described to Journal reporters: they are to pass on tidbits overheard at parties, we hear, a tricky proposition for writers trying to impress sources with their journalistic diligence.

A sizzling headcut, in comparison, provides a less complicated sort of entrée.

UPDATE: Dana, writes, "Aaahhh, I hate it!!!!!!" So it would appear the stipple-portrait paparazzi are out of control. Either that or her editors insisted on the sultry/spy headcut. For the record, here's how Dana actually looked as of last year.

Hilton says in the attached Time video that he works alone, with only "a little bit" of help from his sister. But when Guanabee ran 24 of the gossip blogger's recent photo scrawls past a handwriting expert, three of them looked like they were written by someone else.

Writes Cindy Casares:

We've had people come forward to tell us exclusively that they ghostwrote for Perez Hilton as far back as 2006.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.>So don't be fooled. You might like to think all of Hilton's erudite posts are written by the dashing young man who sounds so erudite on your television. But really they're probably just done by some sweaty, hyperventilating loudmouth whose mom still cleans up after him.

[Guanabee]

Bill Gates and Microsoft have been desperately trying to come up with some way to challenge Google in search and Bing is their latest sure to go down in flames attempt. It's basically revamped version of Live Search, which was a revamped version of MSN Search, and both were epic failures in just about every possible way. But this time they're banking that they can brainwash the masses into thinking they're cooler than Google with their clever little name.

Microsoft's marketing gurus hope that Bing will evoke neither a type of cherry nor a strip club on "The Sopranos" but rather a sound - the ringing of a bell that signals the "aha" moment when a search leads to an answer.

The name is meant to conjure "the sound of found" as Bing helps people with complex tasks like shopping for a camera, said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft's online audience business group.

And if Bing turns into a verb like, say, Xerox, TiVo or, well, Google, that would be nice too. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, said Thursday that he liked Bing's potential to "verb up." Plus, he said, "it works globally, and doesn't have negative, unusual connotations."

But some outsiders think that the name Bing, well, sucks.

Peter Sealey, a former chief marketing officer at the Coca-Cola Company, said Microsoft should have picked a name that more directly connotes search.

"Bing has no equity; it signals nothing," Mr. Sealey said. "It is going to be an enormous expense to create an image for this thing called Bing."

Meanwhile, some tech people were already noting that Bing is also an unfortunate acronym: "But It's Not Google."

HA! How could they have not noticed that? And yeah, we're still all grossed out by the Bing connection to Sopranos strippers and Elizabeth Hurley's knocker-upper. Bing just screams social disease in our minds. And now this guy is probably going to sue them! You have failed AGAIN Microsoft.

Microsoft's Search For A Name Ends With a Bing [New York Times]

It's the human impulse to try and find one's brand, or one's employer's, among the "most influential" that turns the bastardized Tokyo subway map into self-promulgating piece of marketing.

The map is a reminder — as if we needed one — that, these days, you don't need to be a print magazine publisher to use an arbitrary ranking system to get people to look at your content.

Speaking of which: You can find the full-sized map here.

[via Daring Fireball]

As far as she's concerned, Lacy had it all, 'round about May: A book (about Web 2.0 companies like Facebook), a Web video show, a BusinessWeek column (and gestalt-changing cover story), a blog and of course a Twitter stream. Then she realized no medium was helping another much.

After about 10 years of "worked evenings, sleepless nights, sacrificed relationships and any kind of work/life balance," the tech pundit just wrote a long essay concluding that becoming a brand is overrated because "I can't pull fans and readers across platforms." Also: "brand that hits people fast usually doesn't last."

Oh, sure, Lacy admits, she's making more money, is better prepared for the downturn, has greater name recognition, experiences "amazing once-in-a-lifetime experiences," and, hell, people even stop her in the street to tell her she's awesome, but not in the right way, you see:

I'm stunned by how many people read this blog, but never go to TechTicker. Or how many people watch TechTicker, but have no idea I write a BusinessWeek column. Or how many people follow me on Twitter, but still think I'm on staff for BusinessWeek full-time. Or— I swear to God— the number of people who know me from any of those platforms and say, "You wrote a book?" ...Whenever I get recognized and someone asks if I'm Sarah Lacy, I smile and say yes, but then coyly ask how they know me. Because I've learned it's different every time, and it's never all-of-the-above.

What is wrong with you internet people? Sarah Lacy is working hard so you can fully appreciate her and you're not FULLY APPRECIATING HER IN ALL MEDIA CONSTANTLY.

At this rate she'll never be culturally immortal!

That's the thing about branding yourself: It gets easier to do all the time, and the potential audience is constantly growing. But you're still on the hedonic treadmill, racing to surpass — or even keep up with — all the competition.

Click to expand the images, which Microsoft designer Evan Malahy told LiveSide he hopes "raise awareness not only outside of Microsoft, but help us (designers) have more traction and power to get these inconsistencies addressed."

Wired: Apple to New York City: Bite Me

The team conducted an experiment in which 341 university students completed what they believed was a visual acuity task, during which either the Apple or IBM logo was flashed so quickly that they were unaware they had been exposed to the brand logo. The participants then completed a task designed to evaluate how creative they were, listing all of the uses for a brick that they could imagine beyond building a wall.

People who were exposed to the Apple logo generated significantly more unusual uses for the brick compared with those who were primed with the IBM logo, the researchers said. In addition, the unusual uses the Apple-primed participants generated were rated as more creative by independent judges.

"This is the first clear evidence that subliminal brand exposures can cause people to act in very specific ways," said Gráinne Fitzsimons. "We've performed tests where we've offered people $100 to tell us what logo was being flashed on screen, and none of them could do it. But even this imperceptible exposure is enough to spark changes in behavior."

[Science Daily via Neatorama]

Wales needs to think about the special attributes he — and he alone — brings to the Wikipedia brand. Wales is becoming known as a stud to end all studs, having bedded women around the world on Wikipedia-promoting junkets. Three words: user-generated condoms. Imagine the sum of all human knowledge unrolling before her eyes. Pick the right article to put on your article, and she'll edit herself right into your history. And worry not — they're as reliable as the information in Wikipedia.

That's just the beginning. What (or whom) would you brand with the august Wikipedia logo? The 250th commenter gets a free copy of Jimmy Wales: Vision: Wikipedia and the Future of Free Culture on DVD.

Interbrand also designed the logo to be animated, but we probably won't see the animations until Xerox's multimillion-dollar rebranding campaign is fully underway later this year. In keeping with Xerox's long-forgotten glory days, we suggest a new twist on an old idea: A children's singalong with the logo hopping from word to word. Everyone, follow the bouncing ball!