Gawker: valleywag, dot com

Let's All Pitch in to Build a Better Bubble

Ryan Tate — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:27:39 EDT

The economy may wax and wane, but overheated tech rhetoric lives forever. Today's how news: The internet apps for Apple's internet phone will soon be bigger than the internet. What?

An attention seeker at an attention-seeking company said something outrageous about the iPhone, and of course the news is now everywhere. Here is the specific outrageous thing, spoken by the CEO of GetJar (you don't care what that is, trust us) to the BBC:

"Apps will be as big if not bigger than the internet... They will peak at around 100,000 by the end of the year. That will be a tipping point and after that there will be a gradual fall in the rate of development. "

Every bubble needs nonsense on which to feed. Ten years ago, during the dot-com bubble, we learned the following:

The Dow would hit 50,000 (it's now just below 9,000).
Amazon stock would hit 400 (it peaked around 115 and peaked above 300 but quickly fell back to Earth and now trades for about 80)
The online ad business would be worth $28 billion by 2005 (try less than half that)

Since iPhone apps are internet apps, sold via the internet, for use on the internet, the idea they will be "bigger than the internet" somehow — in related software revenue? lines of code? time spent by users? — is nonsensical. And thus perfect for parting fools with their money! We can't wait for the first iPhone app investment fund. (Oh, nevermind, too late.)

(Pic: Steve Jobs with Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile executives for the unveiling of the iPhone in Germany, September 2007.)

Who's Gonna Buy Monster?

confonz — Fri, 04 May 2007 13:03:41 EDT

CONFONZ — That damn Monster is still outside your house, peeking in the windows. Every once in a while, it knocks on the window and quietly suggests that you need a new job. Well, it seems as though that Monster's got its own window knockers, and they're carrying cash. Earlier this week, the dot com's stock price leapt up like frogs in a dynamite pond. All over rumors of an impending buyer. After the jump, we look at the most recent round of rumored ruffian buyers.
As if it weren't bad enough to work for a company's who's mascot has some strange trumpet-based nose, now the poor folks who run this fairly successful site have to worry that they're going to be snarfed up by the Tribune (Note the Favicon defaults to a Sun logo...) company, or worse yet McClatchy. Both of these newspaper companies are desperately poor, thanks to years of losing marketshare to Craigslist, of all places, and the mind boggles at just how, in fact, a company that's biggest paper is the Miami Herald could afford to buy such a successful startup.
Of course, the real sexy buyout rumor is, surprise! Google. Just imagine how excited all those vets working at Military.com will be when their shares get swapped for 10 times their current value! Of course, rumors of Google buying Monster are vastly overstated. In all actuality, it's far more likely that Gannett will end up the buyer. It's another newspaper company, but at least it already owns web properties, namely, Careerbuilder.com.

The Deadliest Dot Com

www.valleywag.com — Thu, 03 May 2007 14:07:15 EDT

CONFONZ — Everyone's seen Rotten.com before. It's the site that launched a thousand lawsuits, cease and desists, and mouth-covered sprints to the nearest vomit receptacle. But what you may not know is that the site is not simply a one-off, man-in-a-basement affair. Instead, it is one arm of a larger entity, populated by DorkBot-teers, wayward bubble profiteers, and weird chefs. They all work together to build the most horrifying and terrible retinue of sites on the Net, and Buddha bless them for their hardwork. After the jump, we tip-toe through the Rotten Tulips.
While the standard Rotten faire is mostly focused on pictures of dead people, strange and suggestive photos of old, and historical curiosities, the rest of the Rotten empire isn't as gruesome. But that's not saying much, because the Vietnam war was somewhat less gruesome than Rotten.com as well.
Lately, the primary focus of Rotten's staff has been the NNDB, AKA the notable names database. This massive list of biographies was initially created to support another aspect of the Rotten empire: the Rotten Deadpool. If you don't have a Deadpool account yet, you're letting the terrorists win.
While we're on the subject of the Deadpool, it should be noted that the world of software is not seen as one of danger by Deadpool users. take, for instance, the fact that Bill Gates is only in 91 deadpools. And that Steve Jobs is only on 17! That's nowhere near the top names in the game: Billy Graham has 10,269 picks. There's just no substitute for wishful thinking when you're trying to build a list of people you expect to die in the next year, eh?
We close now, with an anecdote overheard told by Rotten's founder and chief creepy guy, Rotten Dot Tom. Tom was waiting in line at a bank one day, when he overheard the teller and a customer arguing over which site on the Internet was the grossest. The teller insisted that it was Rotten.com. The customer was adamant that it was Rate My Poo. Rotten Dot Tom smiled inside... he runs both.

Graveyard: Remember the couchsurf

Nick Douglas — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 11:42:28 EDT

In this age of rising and falling get-rich-quick schemes, let us pause to honor a fallen dot-com that sought no wealth, that was truly meant for the greater good. Brothers and sisters, CouchSurfing.com has passed away.

The site where normal people offered others a place to crash (or "couchsurf") championed a San Franciscan — no, a universal — spirit the Craigslist founders would have admired. "I saw in CS, in you," says site founder Casey, "the power to change not only they way we travel, but change the world itself."

But that power could not save CouchSurfing from a hard drive failure and poorly executed backup. Founder Casey reports, "it has become clear that certain essential pieces are not recoverable." He has decided to let the site pass away.

With each death of an honest-to-God help-the-people website, which asked for no funding and sought no liquidation event, the Valley is the less. So ask not for whom the surf rolls; it rolls for thee.

Couchsurfing [Farewell message]

Ask Valleywag: How do I hire geniuses without sharing my idea?

Nick Douglas — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 17:17:28 EDT

Dear readers, the Valley is a frightening place. So many norms, so few people willing to help. So in addition to how-to articles, consider Valleywag your source for one-on-one advice. E-mail tips@valleywag.com with "Ask Valleywag" in the subject, and you could get your question answered by any of our correspondents or on-call experts.

Our first letter comes from Eric, who writes:

I've been creating web ideas for over a year now and feel like I'm hitting a brick wall. My motivation to create and implement new ideas is slowly fading away because of my lack of contacts.

I'm writing to you because I've come up with a new idea that can revolution the way we do buying and selling online. I believe my idea could possibly be as big as Pierre's idea when he created EBay in 1995. But what's so good about this idea if I can't properly implement it with a great team? I was wondering if you could possibly give some words of advice on how a one man team can prosper in an industry like this. Or even better, refer anyone who you think would be interested in being part of a team that will create and innovate the way consumers buy and sell online.

After the jump, the sad truth: Ideas are worth zilch.

Dear Eric,

Your idea, whatever it is, could very well be revolutionary. It could shift the paradigm, flip the hierarchy, subvert the hegemony. But it's also nothing special.

Ask any creative person — especially a writer — for the most loathsome sentence in the world. (It's "You're past deadline.") But the second is "I have this great idea!"

Because that implies that hey, once the idea's there, the rest is just busywork, right? Throw some engineers in a room, slather some venture capital over the whole mess, and they'll spin ideas into gold. That thought process is what made the dot-com bubble. And this time around — yes, Virginia, there is a bubble — it won't work.

Oh, there's stupid money floating around. But this time, everyone smells it. In the first bubble, your only enemy was yourself — how could you fuck up your own deal?

This time, your enemy is every other half-competent engineer, entrepreneur, and visionary in the Valley and beyond. And there's one thing they all have: ideas.

In a crowd of smart, well-educated, and privileged people, ideas are the cheapest commodity. Even a drop-out gossip columnist can name five off the top of his head: Aggregated drama tracking; vertical search for statistics; a network of personality-based group webzines; weblog-driven desktop toys; a section in brick-and-mortar American Apparel stores for branded CafePress-style tees. Chances are, those ideas are already taken, tested, and rejected.

So take one piece of advice from this, Eric: If you want to build your idea, share it. If you're afraid someone will steal it, then how will you sell it? If a copycat could take you out, then nothing can turn your idea into a gravy train.

Sincerely,
Valleywag

Webvan is back!

Nick Douglas — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 10:00:00 EDT

Hoo boy. It was one thing to see the return of Pets.com. Then came Flooz 2.0. But all joking aside, Amazon's resurrection of the Webvan business model should scare the bejeezus out of us all.

Yep, Amazon's taking a cue from one of the most flammable of dot-com bubble burnouts and mailing groceries to your home, according to Valleywag's big sister Lifehacker. Oh, it's not that big of a deal. Amazon can afford to waste some money mailing out organic fair-trade potato chips.

Get your groceries from Amazon [Lifehacker]

Easy names make easy cash

Nick Douglas — Wed, 31 May 2006 12:20:58 EDT

Science mag Nature.com says,

A psychology study has found that, at least in the short-term, stocks with names that are easier to pronounce consistently outperform those with more confusing monikers.

Some really rough tests indicate the effect could last a year. Ridiculous assertion? Shaky evidence? Not at all! For instance, consider the marketability of these names:

Gnyarky names

Yahoo! — How do you pronounce the second syllable? If Yahoo! is in the middle of a sentence, does it get its own shout? What about Spaniards confused by the missing ¡? This company's doomed.
Flickr — "Flick-rah". Sounds like a He-man mount to me. Who'd want to buy this startup?
Craigslist — All those consonants! What a mouthful! No wonder the newspapers are laughing — this company poses no threat to their business.
Cisco Systems — "Kisco"? "Sisco"? NO CHANCE.

Fluent names

Boo — What a simple dot-com name! Warp Drive 9, Scotty, and chart a course to profits!
Amiga — So friendly! (Handy Spanish tip: it means "female friend"! You might have some!) Destined to beat the world's Intels and Adiums and rise to dominance in the personal computer field.
WebVan — Two English words. Couldn't be simpler. Shift into third.
Dabble — Whoops, how'd that one get in here?

Simple sounds make for sound investments [Nature.com]

Let's play TechCrunch!

Nick Douglas — Wed, 24 May 2006 21:55:37 EDT

So last night I got to "demo some exciting products," as the kids say, at Bite PR's PlayBite event. So in the grand tradition of TechCrunch, here's a rundown of the products I tried.

Swaptree

Service: Sharing site
Status: Private beta
Is it any good? Frustratingly so. Beats the competition by being free and flexible — just throw in everything you're willing to trade out, list everything you want, and Swaptree shows you everything you can get for your stuff. The system auto-arranges three-part and four-part trades to make a thick web of borrow-ability.
Business plan: You're giving Swaptree of all the media passing through your hands, and your zip code. Holy targeted advertising, Batman!

Limbo 41414

Service: Bid pennies on products from your mobile phone. Lowest unique bid wins.
Status: Funded by DFJ, working out its partnerships
Is it any good? The setup's gimmicky, but hey, this is a world where people pay two bucks for a ringtone.
Business plan: Sponsored auctions — hey kids, bid on the new Sony plasma TV! Tell all your friends! — and occasionally charging a buck per bid.

Three more after the jump.

oqo

Product: A handheld computer running a full version of Windows XP
Status: In production for a year now
Is it any good? Pretty cool, and it fits in a cargo pants pocket. But since it's market toward the suits-and-slacks crowd, this heavy thing will end up clipped to belts. Works with wifi, but what good is a handheld that doesn't run on cell networks?
Business plan: 1. Make product. 2. Sell product. 3. Profit!

Inkling

Service: Prediction markets. Fantasy stock market meets Long Bets.

Status: Bootstrapping and already pulling in clients. Still needs to buy Inkling.com — InklingMarkets.com ain't as sexy.

Is it any good? Even Blink author Malcolm Gladwell would accept the wisdom of these crowds — check out the business plan.

Business plan: The public consumer version's just a demo — businesses pay for internal prediction markets where employees trade. Inkling is considering white-label versions for content outlets too.

Browster

Service: Actually, I didn't demo them. So let's pretend Browster is a dog. Pug dog. No, bulldog.

Status: Friendly, if a bit of a drooler.

Is it any good? Good dog. Gooood dog. Have a biscuit.

Business plan: Get adopted by Steve Jurvetson. Be VC-fed like Matt Mullenweg.

Rip, mix, burn: Three hot theft-based dot-coms

Nick Douglas — Tue, 23 May 2006 18:03:40 EDT

From Napster to YouTube, Valley history proves: Theft is a business plan! And these three hot picks are headed to the top of the Theft Economy.

SpotBit hosts scans of popular magazines — a virtually cost-free business. Look ma, no clearances! Last week, media blog FishBowlNY was tracking SpotBit's survival with some incredulity. And sure, the old main page may now just show an error message, but that's just a minor setback, right?
Feedpass isn't exactly stealing, but it's sure borrowing on loose terms. And, says tech blogger Michael Arrington, the feed parsing site is pretty useless — it's basically a poor man's Feedburner.
The cream of today's crop must be Chinese event site Boubo.com, which supports its perfect simulacrum of Yahoo's Upcoming.org with Google ads (OMG scandal!). Check out the Boubo screenshot on (Yahoo's) Flickr, where one Yahoo employee has tagged the listings with translations like "NEW STARBUCKS, 50% OFF ALL FRAPPUCINO'S - Forbidden Palace, West Hall." Heehee.

Let's start wasting your day! Acquired or expired?

Nick Douglas — Tue, 23 May 2006 12:25:35 EDT

So you can tell Jar Jar from Renkoo? Great skill, but obsolete, baby. The makers of "Star Wars or Web 2.0" now ask — Acquired or expired?

Sharpen your schadenfreude — no cheating with Fucked Company — and guess which companies got scooped up, and which were left at the bottom of the barrel. (I got 17. You?)

Acquired or expired? [Cerado.com]

"You call that art? My three-year-old could do that!"

Nick Douglas — Thu, 18 May 2006 15:16:53 EDT

Neologistic blog Word Spy notices a phrase coming back into vogue:

startup artist n. A person who specializes in creating new businesses.

Current citations: Wired Magazine on May 1, 2006, and BusinessWeek on November 1, 2005.

First known citation: 1990. Uh-oh.

See also: Dot con artist, cited in 1999 and 2000.

Startup artist [Word Spy]

Oh snap!

Nick Douglas — Tue, 16 May 2006 20:40:40 EDT

Oh, the naiveté! Startup Snap.com just relaunched with a slow but fancy search engine (Web 2.0, as always, is dumb but pretty). And despite a "Why Snap is Better" page longer than Jon Schwartz's ponytail, Snap is asking for even more half-baked ideas.

Snap's team is holding a brainstorming contest basically outsourcing Snap's whole business plan. And they've rigged up a nice little Digg-style button for voting on reader-submitted ideas. Some current ideas boil down to "pay 50 cents per referral," "spam school districts," and "fight Chinese censorship."

Still waiting for someone to submit "Use a search box and a button." How about "Don't give people a chance to claim royalties on obvious suggestions?"

Snap [Search page]
Launch Contest [Snap blog]

Fleck eBays Web 2.0 business plans

Nick Douglas — Mon, 08 May 2006 12:13:08 EDT

Fleck.com, a Web-2.0-licious startup with the "1. Be coy, 2. ???, 3. Profit!" business plan, put four businesses on the block today. But Fleck is to a business incubator what a microwave is to a French kitchen. Each available business is just a domain name and a concept — but at starting bids of a buck each, what a deal!

But talk about the Uncanny Valley — these startups are just realistic enough to be scary. Drugle — tagline "Sex, Drugle.com, and Rock 'n' Roll" — is a health search, Betafy collects willing beta users, and so on. And Fleck blogger Boris says he can pop these things off like nobody's business.

Headr.com, Betafy.com, Clicksy.com and Drugle.com [Fleck Blog]

Embargo breakers: Sphere will suck in the morning

ndouglas — Tue, 02 May 2006 04:07:54 EDT

Look, if a company sends out a press release at 1:22 AM EST Tuesday morning, is there any good reason to embargo it until 7 AM the same day? Answer: hell no. If Michael Arrington wants to gush about a startup, he'll gush when he damn well pleases. And if Valleywag wants to unfairly criticize that startup...well, here, about four hours early, is the press release for Sphere. Hope for its sake that it's actually useful. "Sphere is an unfortunate name," says a friend of Valleywag, "if your service is a load of balls."

Beginning below, ending after the jump.

New Blog Search Engine Sphere Launches [TechCrunch]
Sphere [Official site]

From: sphere.com beta signup [mailto:redacted] Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2006 1:22 AM To: [redacted] Subject: sphere.com going live!

Hi - we want you to know that sphere is going live early tomorrow morning. Prior to doing so, we'd like to give you an early look at the product.

We've been able to integrate a lot of the great feedback we've received from a number of beta users. Thank you. As many of you know, we were hardware constrained during the beta and weren't able to give everyone access to the site - to those of you who didn't receive a password, thank you for your patience.

We'd appreciate you helping us get the word out if you like what we've built. Please feel free to blog about the site any time after 7:00 am Tuesday (May 2nd).

Here is the url: www.sphere.com. New in this V1.5 release:

* custom range histogram;
* sphere it bookmarklet that makes it easy to find blog posts that relate to what you're reading on the Web;
* top queries this hour/ this week;
* RSS for search results;
* community feedback buttons throughout the site;
* expanded related media verticals including podcasts (Yahoo! API), books (Amazon API), and photos (CNET Webshots API);
* expanded related news articles coverage (over 50 mainstream news sites such as CNN, NYT, ESPN, Fox, USA Today to name a few);
* expanded profiles;
* featured blogs for 12,000+ keyword search terms covering over 500 broad topics including baseball, anime, food, web 2.0, tech news, knitting, culture, etc.; and
* a brand new back end that scales.

The best two featues are the custom range feature (a search on 'mohammed cartoons' really illustrates its utility) and the sphere it bookmarklet (take a chance, download and it'll change your life). Also, check out the featured blogs for a number of topics like baseball, food, knitting, motherhood, web 2.0, google, etc - you'll find featured blogs for about 12,000 keyword search terms. And check out the related media for almost any search - you'll now find podcasts, books and photo's in addition to our news articles.

As always, we would appreciate your thoughts, and we hope you like it.

Best,
Sphere Founders

Trent Bigelow's non-autistic network: Interview with Palopia's founder

ndouglas — Mon, 01 May 2006 20:17:54 EDT

"Social software sucks," a developer told me this weekend, "because it makes people autistic." Society arises naturally from interaction, not a friends list — and forcing it into the latter makes users act autistic. Palopia — a pre-beta social network so new that even Michael Arrington hasn't called them yet — promises to fix that.

CEO Trent Bigelow told USC's Daily Trojan, "It's not about creating a better Facebook, it's about changing the way we network online." His plan: integrate e-mail, messaging, and calendars into a social network so it's actually social. When he pinged Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg with some of these ideas, Mark snubbed him.

Now Trent has a team (mostly classmates from the University of Southern California), a welcome site (in the Web 2.0 national colors of blue, pink and white), and some time for a Valleywag IM interview. Here 'tis, with the boring bits edited out.

Valleywag: Righto. So you're young. About...I'm guessing 20?
Trent Bigelow: 21 next september (sound like a kid doesn't it)
Wag: No prob, I'm 22, half the CEOs here are closer to our age than Steve Jobs's.
Get any calls from a journalist doing his requisite "30 under 30" article?
Trent: nothing published yet...have a few that are interested...amazing that a college newspaper can do this much buzz
Wag: How's the reaction been? What types of people calling you?
Trent: great so far...everything from VCs, companies (potential partners), potential hires, and even students who just want to help...everybody seems to be telling us that if we deliver what we're talking about...then we're onto something big!
Wag: And what you're talking about is "social networking that's actually social and works." [The site tagline]
Love the phrasing, by the way. A lesser man would have put "And it works too" in a separate sentence.
Trent: yeah, sounds like us...we think we can go way beyond just profiles and comments
Wag: If someone said, "But I already have Flickr and MySpace and Upcoming," how would you respond?
Trent: i'd say, "sure, but sooner or later, if another service can converge all of those features in an all-encompassing environment, that the organizations you're involved in, with much more relevant features, wouldn't you take the simplier, better experience?"

Wouldn't you? The answer — and the other four-fifths of the interview — after the jump.

Wag: No.
I'm just messing with you, that sounds great. You have calendars, an e-mail interface, profiles, groups, and photo sharing listed on your "The Idea" page. Any other major features?
Trent: the key is where the users are going — not where they are... we're working on ways to make an user exodus realistic and likely...starking with social circles...
Wag: So you're aware of MySpace's death grip on the average kid.
Trent: yeah, but...no one expects really deep tools and environments for communications, collaboration, and all other kinds of fun interactions...we're thinking of really out of the box ideas...that i don't think anyone is expecting from the other guys...
if students are willing to spend so much time on this current sites with such little to do, what will happen when we start really opening new doors? we know we'll need to partner with other content providers, ventures, and organizations to make this a reality sometime soon.
Wag: Hot stuff. Who's paying? Get any funding yet?
Trent: well, that's complicated...maybe in a few weeks we can expect a couple of "interesting" announcements... let's just say no one around here is sweating much anymore...
i'm sure everyone's heard of them...
Wag: Are we talking "This round will last for years" money, or "Okay, enough to get to round B" money?
Trent: it depends on how excited these guys get in the next few weeks...probably somewhere in between.
Wag: How'd you assemble your team? They're all still in school as well?
Trent: yeah, almost all of them are still undergraduates. Don't let their age fool you, though, they're some of the most talented and passionate people I've found yet. I networked among USC's professors, student organizations, as well as family and friends. A lot more tried out for the team, but only the best stayed. This is a good thing.
Wag: "Don't let their age fool you"? That's totally going to end up in your first New York Times profile.
Youngest team member?
Trent: youngest member, 18.
but a 16 y.o. from Boston really wants to join...he's been emailing us everyday since the DT article broke.
Wag: Brilliant! E-mailing him back?
Trent: we've made a real effort to email EVERY person back. I hope to get him and others (minors) involved in a new virtual internship program we're hoping to launch in the next year.
if you've guessed it—something that sets us a part is that we're user empowered, it's a collaborative movement that we're leading.
Wag: User-generated, Live Web, and all that jazz.
It's as if you're already in the Valley.
Trent: yeah, it's funny that many (older) analysts seem to be really impressed with the "big guys" user experience...like they've earned their users via best features...we all know that's not how they did...but that may play a big role on how they lose it...
Wag: So let's go over some things on your bio.
Trent: uh oh...
Wag: You say you talk to your furniture. What are some things you've told your furniture?
Trent: it's mostly asking them questions...why do i have to study?...why does cafeteria food suck so much...and what's going to change the global economy in an wireless-internet-everywhere environment
Wag: And this furniture, does it talk back?
Trent: no, they're all pretty lame...
Wag: So okay. Your bio says you like Coldplay. WTF, Trent?
Trent: yeah...that's about as mainstream as i get...what about Air, or Lemon Jelly? what do you like then?
Wag: You have just redeemed yourself.
Trent: whew...close one.
Wag: Let's get the bloggers to link to the interview. What are some of your favorite blogs?
Trent: steve rubel's (now), techcrunch, oriellyradar...
there are others
Wag: Has TechCrunch's Michael Arrington contacted you yet?
Trent: not....yet.... (call me, Michael....) j/k
Wag: He's totally going to call you.
Trent: we'll see... i feel special just being on valleywag...
Wag: Oh, don't — being on Valleywag halves your Q score. And probably your IQ score as well.
Trent: damnit!
Wag: Tom from MySpace has a friend-only profile for collecting hot Asian girls he's met. Will you have anything like that?
Trent: i don't about tom...but i've got a fantastic, amazing (etc) girlfriend...so, if I have a special profile...it's just going to be for her....awww...
*(don't know about tom)
Wag: Awwwww. Just a moment, I'm throwing up a little into my desk drawer.
Trent: yeah, that's expected...
Wag: All right, when should we all keep an eye out for a Palopia launch?
Give us a ballpark range?
Trent: give us a (within) year, and we'll give you give something to talk about...
partnerships take time...we're betting a lot on them (beyond what we've already got)
Wag: Couple last things.
You have a college team, a community college team, and a high school team. What about adults?
Trent: although we want to eventually expand and help EVERYONE...we think we've got a better immediate connection to people closer to our age...(for the time being)...we'll see...i think we should focus on our core for the launch...
Wag: Groovy. So before you crush them beneath your friendly pastel-blue army boot, what do you want to tell MySpace, Facebook, and all the other social networks?
Trent: apologies in advance...for actually caring about the user experience and their safety.... also, reminder... it's about relevant partnerships, the power of the brand, and making a member movement...
Wag: Cool. Last question: Who on the team is single? Cause a couple of you drop the girlfriend bomb on your bios, and that's just a letdown to all the other tech kids.
Trent: i think maybe we could help form some new relationships for even the most tech savvy kids out there...
you never know how much palopia will help.
Wag: So could someone on this team hook up with a hottie on their own site?
Web 2.0 is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Trent: absolutely....

The man who tried to buy Facebook [USC Daily Trojan]
Palopia [Official site]

Naming the babies: Name your startup after a Finn

ndouglas — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 19:52:38 EDT

After he met some Finns, SuperHappyDevHouse organizer David Weekly pointed out to me that Finnish names are "very Web 2.0." It's true! The list of Finnish names (with pronunciations!) is a goldmine of Web 2.0 monikers and an invaluable resource for any startup. After all, Web 2.0 sites like Riya are already banking on the cuteness of a first name, and Ikea's been naming its furniture after Swedish locations for years.

Each Finnish name cries to be attached to a certain sort of Web 2.0 startup. So try these names, with the recommended services they could define:

Tytti: Social porn
Miika: Web-based enterprise software
Per: Peer-to-peer micro-loans
Jali: Social bookmarking. In pink
Yrjö: Distributed gossip tracker
Riku: Community blog
Saari: Outsourced customer service
Atso: MMORPG currency market
Daavid: Some kind of Yahoo Maps mashup

Finnish names [saunalahti.fi]

DailyCandy: Wait, do I work for them?

ndouglas — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 22:06:14 EDT

The only thing more old-school than a dot-com (okay, except a BBS, grandpa) is an at-dot-com — an e-mail newsletter like DailyCandy. The Manhattan-based shopping guide snagged a feature story in New York Magazine, and every detail seemed eerily familiar.

The tone is described as "gossipy," "cliqueish," and defensively independent.
It's rumored that the writers aren't exactly raking in the dough.
And yet the company manages to rack up a mythical $100-million selling price.
There's precious little office space, and the staff would rather tease than invite a journalist over.
It's really just Old Media with the Internet stirred in.
It tries oh so hard to be sexy and trendy.
All the guys involved are probably gay.

It just felt...eerie. As if...as if I already worked for this company. But one line relieved all Twilight Zone heebie-jeebies.

"The company...fiercely combats any perception of impropriety."

Well fuck that.

How Sweet Is It? [New York Magazine]
Illo: Daily Candy [DailyCandy.com]

Sketchy rumor of the morning: Did MySpace shop for buddyPing?

ndouglas — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 14:17:14 EDT

I've heard Nigerian spam pitches with more cred than this rumor, but a forum poster says MySpace shopped for a wee cell-based social service.

This is something started by my aunties best friend, MySpace offered to buy it for £5million, so i think it's gooing to be big. I'm not advertising, i just think it's damn cool, and that people here might find it useful. It's only been online for 10weeks, so it's damn small, but it's gooing to be big, you can tell.

Sure, buddyPing is a glorified mashup, with a business model mimicking social site Dodgeball (now treading water at Google). And sure, Yahoo property Upcoming is planning its own cell service. And, yes, "buddyPing" is an ungainly name. But rip-off services? Dumb names? Of course it belongs with MySpace.

Buddy Ping - This is cool [ClanTemplates Forums]
buddyPing [buddyping.com]

Lazy news: New York Magazine finds the Internet again

ndouglas — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 11:44:15 EDT

Readers of the New York Magazine (ones who don't read Slate, the New York Times Styles, Forbes, the San Francisco Chronicle, or Wired) now know there's a boom on. Writer Kurt Andersen spends three pages (well, the last page is two lines, like the last page of a dictated-length term paper) telling the same story as the other papers, but with the cluelessness with which the New York media glitterati always approach the Internet. It's like seeing USA Today redo a trend piece, but without the humility. So spare yourself the read and use the Valleywag Lazy News Edition.

Title: The Way We Boom Now
Subtitle: What this age of Internet euphoria looks like to those of us who were in the game last time around. For one, bubbles aren't completely bad.
The Internet industry is a bubble again. But it's not a bubble. But it is a bubble...or is it? No. Yes.
Poster children: Fred Wilson, the blogging VC who fed the first bubble, now chastising the fools who fed the first bubble; MySpace, YouTube, and DailyCandy (sing with me: one of these things is not like the others...); bloggers and podcasters
Illustration: (Pictured) The backs of two chic Net users, one in 1998 and one in 2006. Message unclear.
Lead: Kurt Andersen and his friends are prescient but too dumb to notice.
Bold names: John Battelle, dot-com journalist survivor of Boom 1 and founder of blog ad network Federated Media Publishing; Walter Isaacson, Internet czar of Time Warner in the 90s; Michael Hirschorn, Andersen's former business partner at Inside; Fred Wilson, "rockstar" VC; Jerry Colonna, Fred's co-founder at VC firm Flatiron; Dany Levy, founder of DailyCandy (more on her later today); Michael Wolff, Burn Rate burnout
Lesson 1: A $100-million dollar valuation for a shopping newsletter is "really not crazy" if Kurt Andersen decides it's not. This is the magic logic of trend stories.
Lesson 2: If Valleywag dedicates 250 words to a tip, it's worth one sentence to a real paper.
Lesson 3: Burn Rate author Michael Wolff sucks at forecasting. Also, he calls the Internet "the business."
Best line: "I'm a rock star again." — Fred Wilson
Non sequitur: The whole slant is "We've learned our lesson" — but Fred's quoted saying half the boom participants weren't around for the 90s bubble. Where'd they learn this lesson, in grade school?
WTF: "To call a Web business a 'dot-com' in 2006 would be the equivalent of calling a black person 'colored.'" I tried to verify this, but there weren't any black people around.

The Way We Boom Now [New York Magazine]
Earlier Lazy News: Web 2.0 has a local address [Valleywag]

OLD BUT BREAKING NEWS: Tumbleweeds in South Park explained

ndouglas — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 12:28:16 EDT

SF Chronicle writer Dan Fost has rolling updates on the "Tumbleweeds in South Park" tale referenced in his South Park feature story.

The original story: A former dot-commer released tumbleweeds upon South Park during the Bust. But who? Why? With what PR firm egging them on?

After Valleywag bugged Dan for background, he dug up the weed-tumbler, Lisa Meckler. The former Wired Magazine employee gathered some tumbleweeds in 2002, issued a press release, and scattered them across the South Park lawn. Above, a photo of the event coaxes poetry out of Dan.

Two sidenotes after the jump.

Tumbleweeds: The Back Story [Tech Chronicles]
Home of dot-com revolution to be given final valediction [Send2Press.com]
Earlier: Tumbling tumbleweeds [Valleywag]

Note that according to Meckler, the tumbleweeds "just sat there." Fost originally wrote that they "roll[ed] across the lawn." Career-breaking fact-check scandal?

Also: In her press release, Meckler described a "fog-like unease" blanketing San Francisco. I think it's called "fog."