Gawker: valleywag, caterina fake

Yahoo Lap Dances Get No Applause from Twitterati

Ryan Tate — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:50:09 EDT

The co-founder of Flickr helped lead a chorus of criticism against Yahoo over strippers; an NYU professor liked a sex-blog post; and Sarah Silverman spotted a very gay gym activity. The Twitterati had sexuality on the brain.

Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, who sold her company to Yahoo, objected to having lap dances on stage at a Yahoo programming conference. This is the sort of patriarchal BS you get with a male CEO.... err, nevermind. (Pic in top graphic via)

The Frisky's Jessica Wakeman got a sex-related inquiry from a professor we might have confused with Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini, except that even Roubini would never do the "r u" thing.

DJ and Lindsay Lohan ex Samantha Ronson already has enough to talk about in therapy, Yankees!

Comedian Sarah Silverman mocked you, gym rats.

Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg went to NASA's, err, "base" in Mountain View. Ask them to show you the Google air force, Randi! And the secret lasers. Be sure to wink on that last one.

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

Halle Berry Does This Amazing Thing To Your Neck

Ryan Tate — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:03:02 EDT

Touré explained how Halle Berry got touchy with him, in a nice way; Caterina Fake explained the price of "bullshit" and a Washington Post writer explained how he gets through the day. The Twitterati were refreshingly educational.

Music journalist Touré was just trying to say Halle Berry would pinch anyone writing about her. OK, well, we know who our next blog post is going to be about.

Hunch's Caterina Fake found a slightly politer way to say "I don't have time for your bullshit."

First we found out Susan Orlean had a RAID array in her laptop, now we learn she has a terabyte hard drive on order. Maybe the New Yorker writer should be throwing some stories over to Wired?

Google literally saved journalism! It was only one story by one writer (Rob Pegoraro) at one newspaper (Washington Post), sure, but you have to start somewhere.

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza isn't ashamed of how he puts the "Hyper" in "The Fix."

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

Why Flickr's Caterina Fake Is Launching Hunch on Her Own

Owen Thomas — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:40:39 EDT

Caterina Fake, who cofounded Flickr with husband Stewart Butterfield in 2004, has a new startup, Hunch, which may be launching soon. But where's the other half of the famous Web 2.0 couple?

To this day, every history of Flickr has an obligatory mention of the "husband-and-wife team" who started the photo site. Indeed, their relationship was a key part of the winsome story that made Flickr so appealing to reporters and consumers. But we've been hearing for some time that Butterfield and Fake are no longer husband and wife.

They have not worked together in years. After they sold Flickr to Yahoo in 2005 for a reported $35 million, Fake almost immediately took an executive role developing new products, while Butterfield stayed at Flickr as the site's often-diffident manager. They did manage one joint launch: the birth of their daughter Sonnet in 2007. Both left Yahoo last year.

Hunch, which we're told is going to be some sort of question-and-answer search engine, could be launching any day. Fake seems to have thrown herself into working at the New York-based as a chief product officer, a demanding job with a bicoastal commute. One of Fake's cofounders recently told an investor not to be concerned with Fake's availability to work, saying she was divorced. If they are, it's not clear if the couple has actually completed the process; a search of public records did not show a divorce agreement, and Fake and Butterfield did not respond to email inquiries. But their friends agree they are no longer together.

Last July, when she announced on her blog that she'd be joining the startup, she noted:

Will you be working with Stewart? No, he's currently weighing various metallurgical opportunities.

And there is this: Fake has posted only one photo to Flickr since last July: a screenshot of the original Flickr homepage. A wave of nostalgia, as she moves on to the new? Butterfield, meanwhile, seems to have no trouble making friends.

(Photo via caterina)

Flickr layoffs could spell a photo finish

Owen Thomas — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:20:00 EST

Every bit of Yahoo got the slash this week. Why should Flickr, the photo-sharing startup it bought in 2005, be any different?

The sacking of designer George Oates and two of her colleagues might seem too minor to note in a week where 1,500 of their colleagues also got pink-slipped. But Flickr has been spared in past rounds of layoffs. And the seemingly political dismissal of Oates, a well-regarded designer and popular figure in the office, has created a stir of more consequence.

Flickr had become the last great hope of Yahoo, the place where talents frustrated with the Web giant's bureaucracy fled. But it was never meant to be a redoubt of cool — rather, it was meant to be the home base of a conquering army which would transform all of Yahoo, infusing its websites with the buzz of user participation.

Didn't happen. For a while, Flickr rode high; last year, Yahoo shut down its bigger Yahoo Photos site in Flickr's favor. But then Flickr founders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield left. They put Flickr in the hands of a Yahoo executive, Kakul Srivastava, who made the decision to lay off Oates, I'm told.

I haven't uncovered the specific reason Srivastava and Oates had a tiff, but it seems impossible to argue that the firing had anything to do with performance. Oates had championed a project to post photos from the Library of Congress's collections; Library officials just yesterday declared it a resounding success.

This is how a team falls apart: Remove a key player, and the social bonds that keep their friends on the job weaken. Before you know it, you've got a group of employees collecting paychecks, not a team working for a goal. Bugs go unfixed; servers crash; the design becomes ugly; and users flee. This could well happen to Flickr. Back up your photos now!

If that happens, what it tells us is that the culture of Flickr was always illusory — one built on personal ties rather than more lasting devotion to a cause. If so, the notion of exporting it to Yahoo was a delusion. That's the problem with turning a community into a commodity: Take away the people, and you have nothing left.

(Photo by martinalvarez)

What's Caterina Fake's Hunch?

Owen Thomas — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:20:00 EDT

After Yahoo bought Flickr from the wife-and-husband team of Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield in 2005, then-executive Jeff Weiner charged Fake with "building the next Flickr at Yahoo." It never happened — though one result of those instructions, the ill-managed Brickhouse incubator, did provide some entertainment along the way. Fake is now joining a New York-based startup called Hunch. "It is a consumer Internet application, it will have a lot of user participation, and it is more than a little fun," she writes. It is the next Flickr, in other words, or so she hopes. But not at Yahoo. Jeff, shouldn't you be asking for half of Yahoo's money back?

Getty and Flickr partnership took too long

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Yahoo's photo-sharing subsidiary, Flickr, announced it has partnered with Getty Images to streamline the process for Getty's photo editors who want to buy images from Flickr users. For the privilege, Getty will pay Flickr a fee. It's a good idea, but one that took to long to come to fruition. Two years ago at a party in New York, Flickr cofounder Stewart Buttefield told me one way the photo-sharing site could finally make money for Yahoo:

A lot of people buy photos from Flickr users. But people have to know the person, and send them a Flickr mail and they have to negotiate a price. It's a very high-friction process. Taking the friction out of that would be one of things Flickr could do to monetize.

Two years later, the tinnovative Butterfield and his cofounder and wife, Caterina Fake, are out of the company. Maybe now Butterfield's bizarre resignation letter makes more sense? (Photo by ericskiff)

Will Flickr cofounders make a run for the border, or head for the Big Apple?

Jackson West — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:00:00 EDT

Now that Caterina Fake has left Yahoo and Stewart Butterfield has tendered his abstract resignation letter, what will the widely beloved Flickr cofounders do? And where will they go? Brendon Wilson, who worked in the Valley himself before returning to his native Canada, pointed us to an effort by a group of geeks to convince Fake and Butterfield to come back to Vancouver, British Columbia, where Flickr was launched. The welcome wagon even turned out a video slideshow of Flickr photos to remind the couple just how beautiful the city can be. Look, a rainbow! And it may just be working — last night, Butterfield added himself to the Bring Stewart and Caterina Home! group on Facebook. Fake may have other plans, though.

She was recently spotted in New York's startup-laden Flatiron and Chelsea neighborhoods, making the rounds. New York VC Fred Wilsion is an unabashed fan, and the two have already invested alongside his Union Square Ventures in Etsy. Might the pair break hearts in both San Francisco and Vancouver by moving to Manhattan instead? As for New York, all I can say is been there, done that. Head back to Canada for Sonnet's sake, guys. American citizenship ain't what it used to be.

Stewart Butterfield's bizarre resignation letter to Yahoo

Owen Thomas — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:00:00 EDT

Stewart Butterfield, the cantankerous cofounder of Flickr, has, as we've noted, tendered his resignation to Yahoo, as has wife and cofounder Caterina Fake. The two recently celebrated, along with Flickr's other original employees, a "Vestfest" for their take from the $35 million sale of Flickr to Yahoo three years ago; we'd heard as long ago as October that Butterfield was ready to leave. But we couldn't have anticipated the manner of Butterfield's exit. In a long, rambling email to Yahoo executive Brad Garlinghouse, under whose aegis Flickr fell, Butterfield described the company as a tin-smithing concern, but found that there was no place for him as the company left its metallurgical roots. Better this entertaining nonsense than some tired cliche of "bleeding purple," I suppose. I'm also told that this email is classic Butterfield, and that his employees at Flickr would stage dramatic readings of some of his better missives at Flickr's San Francisco headquarters, which will now be run officially by Kakul Srivastava, Flickr's longtime de facto chief. Butterfield's full resignation letter:

(Photo of Butterfield by heather)

Flickr founders Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake abandon the good ship Yahoo

Jackson West — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:20:00 EDT

When Ludicorp co-founders Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake sold Flickr to Yahoo, they also moved from their Vancouver headquarters to the Bay Area to take up jobs at the Sunnyvale campus of the new parent company. Their biggest innovation since was the birth of their daughter, Sonnet — which took considerably less time than adding video to the photo sharing site. Now Fake and Butterfield have joined the stampede, with Fake having left Yahoo on Friday and Butterfield due to stick around until July 12, reports TechCrunch — confirming rumors we'd heard regarding Butterfield's plans to move on. (Photo by Caterina Fake)

Caterina Fake crashes ladyblogs' "digital slumber party"

Melissa Gira Grant — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:20:00 EDT

Women do rule the web, Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake told the New York Times, but with a "crushing sameness." Loads of blogs aimed at the moneyed portion of the lady demographic are launching, including Jezebel (published, like Valleywag, by Gawker Media) — ostensibly part of the "sameness" Fake alludes to. A BlogHer study even deems blogging now mainstream among women. Fake is not swayed:

“The lack of evolution is disappointing to me. Back in 1996, it was going to be this brave new world where women were finally going to take control of their stories."

The girl utopia the early women of the Web have been holding out for? It's arrived, sandwiched neatly between tampon and diet ads. The only question is why we ever expected anything different. (Photo by Caterina Fake)

Stewart Butterfield grooms beard for ... investors?

Owen Thomas — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:00 EDT

Long before he and Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake spawned daughter Sonnet, Stewart Butterfield had a manly thatch of russet facial hair that screamed "Daddy." He's thus the natural winner of Fortune's first beard-off; other contenders like Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, and Yelp's Russel Simmons might as well not have bothered. There's one curiosity about his win, though: Why would a judge praise Butterfield's beard for being "trimmed nicely, edgy, yet mature, so he doesn't look 18 sitting in front of investors"? We don't think judge John Allan, the owner of a chain of grooming clubs, has any special insight into Butterfield's career plans. But he's nonetheless on target: We've heard Butterfield, who sold Flickr to Yahoo more than three years ago, has left Flickr general manager Kakul Srivastava — his "hero" — in charge of his startup baby, so he can tend to his real one, and is ready to bolt from Yahoo.

Flickr to video users: You're a bunch of amateurs

Owen Thomas — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:52:28 EDT

Almost every digital camera captures both pictures and movies. This reality has seemed lost on Flickr for four years. Cofounder Stewart Butterfield reportedly told attendees at a fourth-birthday party last night that Flickr, now owned by Yahoo, will introduce video uploads next month. At this point, Yahoo might as well launch the service on April 1 — the delay has become that much of a joke. Yahoo Video has already relaunched, with its own movie-upload features. So why bother?

We hear the difference between the two sites is that Yahoo Video will host longer, "professional" videos; Flickr will house shorter clips, three minutes or less — and at least at first, only from those who already have Pro accounts. The skilled visual artists who pay to use Flickr should take this as an affront. When it comes to still images, they're good enough to pay to be deemed pros. When they record moving images, they suddenly become amateurs in Yahoo's eyes. Flickr user riot: film at 11.

One could blame this plan on absentee management. After his paternity leave, Butterfield is not returning to a management role at Flickr. His wife and cofounder, Caterina Fake, didn't even attend the Flickr party. Flickr's de facto commander, Kakul Srivastava, came to Flickr from Yahoo after the acquisition. She previously worked on Yahoo's video products. That Flickr took nearly three years after she joined to roll out video doesn't speak well for her stewardship, either.

(Photo by Dan Farber/News.com)

Flickr founder to leave Yahoo

Owen Thomas — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 08:45:35 EDT

At least one key Yahoo executive was unswayed by Friday's revival meeting featuring Steve Jobs: Stewart Butterfield, the founder and general manager of the Yahoo-acquired Flickr photo site. Butterfield, Valleywag has learned, plans to leave to, well, spend more time with his family. It's a pat phrase that always sounds risible, but in Butterfield's case, we'll make an exception: Anyone who has seen photos of Butterfield and his infant daughter Sonnet — on Flickr, naturally — can see his complete and utterly genuine devotion. Yahoo, too, might have a claim on Butterfield's devotion, in the midst of a precarious revamp. But Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, while a big supporter of Flickr himself, is not nearly as cute. No word on whether Butterfield's wife, Caterina Fake, now a high-ranking Yahoo executive, plans any move, or who will replace Butterfield at Flickr. Update: In the comments, Butterfield says that after taking some time off in July, he's decided to take a longer paternity leave, but still plans to return to Yahoo. (Photo by mylesdgrant)

Three years later, Flickr gets around to video

wagger1 — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 12:06:19 EDT

Promises, promises. Flickr cofounders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, we hear, are finally introducing video to the photo-sharing site they sold to Yahoo in 2005. But they've taken their sweet time. First Fake told Engadget back in 2004 that she wanted the site to introduce "short-form video." Then she told ZDNet's Dan Farber in December 2005 that it was being "hotly debated and discussed on the team." And Butterfield hinted last May that his photo sharing site would host moving pictures "soon." For some value of "soon." Here's the reason for the latest delay.

It appears that Flickr's video efforts have been tied up by Yahoo's slow-moving response to Google's popular YouTube video site. At long last, Yahoo's tying together its video properties, and Flickr's part of the grand plan. One hopes it will happen before the Flickr couple's newborn is old enough to drive.

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)

What to expect when you're an executive who's expecting

Owen Thomas — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:29:20 EDT

Why make such a fuss over who's disclosing their pregnancies? I worked at Wired Ventures, then the publisher of Wired magazine, in 1996 and 1997, in the midst of the agony of its failed IPO attempt. One controversy at the time was the disclosure that cofounder Jane Metcalfe, the magazine's publisher, was pregnant and planned to take maternity leave shortly after the planned IPO. For the record, no one I know believes that Metcalfe's pregnancy had anything to do with Wired's troubles. But for a top executive to take a leave is always a strain on a young, growing company, and is a fact best disclosed, as Wired Ventures did. Hence my surprise that Mena Trott waited until now to talk about her news. Caterina Fake, the cofounder of Flickr and an executive at Yahoo, has, by contrast, written publicly and often about her pregnancy. More on the status of Fake's pregnancy, and the rest of the couples mentioned in our poll, shortly.

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)

Yahoo Photos shutting down, Flickr triumphant?

Chris Mohney — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 13:00:10 EST

Time to upgrade this from rumor to unannounced fact — that's our bet, anyway. "Consolidation" was the word seized upon most in Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse's "Peanut Butter Manifesto." And consolidating the duplicate services provided by post-acquisition Flickr and Yahoo Photos makes sense. Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield denied there would be any merging, but that doesn't rule out "consolidation" by way of elimination. For the whys and wherefores, read on.When we predicted that competing products like Flickr and Yahoo Photos would be consolidated, Butterfield reassured nervous Flickr fans:

I betcha Flickr keeps going more or less on the same path (always evolving, sure, but more or less the same) for a long, long time to come.

He went on to call us out specifically:

It's interesting to hear all the different perspectives on this. ... Very different from the inside, but it's mostly stuff I can't talk about. However, I can say that I'm really, really happy about all the recent changes. Valleywag has a lot wrong (just factually wrong, but it shows up in their interpretations) so I wouldn't put a lot of stock in it. All good! And in particular, all good for Flickr and it's future :)

M'kay, but what's good for Flickr ain't so good for Yahoo Photos. It's an unfortunate situation, as Yahoo Photos has actually been doing well lately. However, it can't compete with Flickr's brand and fanatically loyal following, and there really is no reason for Yahoo to maintain two flavors of the same service.

As Jason Kottke pointed out recently, Flickr is under assault from Fotolog, which while much less popular Stateside, is eating Flickr's lunch internationally (particularly in South America). Arguments about relative quality of product aside, this should be worrisome for both of Yahoo's photo teams. Secondly, while Butterfield calms the Flickr faithful, his fellow Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake now leads Brickhouse — Yahoo's in-house idea creche that just launched Yahoo Pipes. With Butterfield and Fake both holding power cards, what challenge could Yahoo Photos realistically mount to stay viable?

Flickr may indeed stay on the same evolutionary path, but Yahoo Photos will almost certainly disappear in the very short term, with its users and content migrated to Flickr gently but forcibly. Flickr itself may well "evolve" some of Yahoo Photos' monetization strategies ... perhaps Flickr will inherent the "Prints and Gifts" section from Yahoo Photos once the just-launched Flickr print service gets off the ground. Either way, Yahoo Photos will be consolidated right out the door, and sooner rather than later.

Yahoo intern shows why Google is more fun than Yahoo

Nick Douglas — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 11:02:00 EDT

Who cares about market share and search algorithms — an exhuberant Yahoo intern just inadvertently showed why working at Google totally beats working at Yahoo. Paul Stamatiou blogged his reasons for loving Yahoo without realizing what he's missing at Google.

[Update: Hi, Diggers! If this article seems immature, that's because it's satire! Enjoy, and remember that people who read the front page get free drugs and candy!]

Google's free food beats Yahoo's free drinks. And Yahoo's "Starbucks-type caffeine vendors" ain't got nothing on Google's mango lassi machine. (You had to look up "mango lassi," didn't you? You poor soul. Googlers know what mango lassis are and they drink them for lunch.)
"The coders are sociable!" he says. Yeah, Paul, that means you'll have to make banter. With geeks. Try that on a non-mango-lassi-filled stomach.
Paul gets to hang around famous bloggers Jeremy Zawodny and Caterina Fake. Oh, that's really exciting, that's so—MATT CUTTS, BITCH.
Paul like's Yahoo's foosball. Foosball (pictured). Dude, the Jumpcut office has foosball, and they've got, like, ten employees and no air conditioning.
What about massages?
Everyone at Yahoo is on Yahoo Instant Messenger. Unlike the real world, where everyone's on AIM except that one "fight the power" AOL hater. And she's on Skype.
Name for Yahoo HQ: Yahoo HQ. Name for Google HQ: Googleplex. You got owned. As the kids say, you got pwned. You got punned.

Next up: Why Yahoo is more fun than Google.

Inside Yahoo! [Paul Stamatiou]
Photo: allyson thought he should play some foosball [janeymoffat on Flickr]

Yahoo angels buy into Etsy.com

Nick Douglas — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 20:20:49 EDT

Online boutique Etsy — think of it as a hipper eBay for handmades — would be just another dot-com, except for the familiarity of its funders. VC Fred Wilson names the Etsy angel investors:

This round was put together by Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, founders of Flickr, and includes Joshua Schachter, the founder of Delicious, and Albert Wenger, the former President of Delicious. These four people have been advising Rob and his colleagues for the past year...

Caterina and Stewart sold Flickr to Yahoo for a rumored $15 to $35 million, and Joshua sold Del.icio.us for somewhere in that range. So what are these mini-millionaires thinking? All but Albert are still in charge of their companies, so it's doubtful they want seats on Etsy's board — too messy, they'd rather just "advise." Maybe these Yahoos hope to adopt another dot-com into the Yahoo Web 2.0 family.

Etsy [Union Square Ventures]