Gawker: valleywag, joshua schachter

Guns, Profanity, Paranoia, and Fear on Twitter

Owen Thomas — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:00:12 EDT

Twitteronia is a scary place to be. A Googler got violent, an NBC TV host swore, and we frightened a top AP editor — while Michelle Malkin had a breakdown. Today's twittiest tweets:

Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter, now a Google engineer, contemplated violence. (There's some kind of thing about guns going around on Twitter! We don't get it, but we sure hope that's what Schachter's referring to!)
KNBC TV personality Shira Lazar corrupted the youth of America.
Associated Press managing editor Lou Ferrara expressed an entirely legitimate concern.
Bizarro right-wing conservatrix Michelle Malkin made it official: She is not PC.
New Yorker writer Tad Friend cried in public.

See something worth noting on Twitter? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

Delicious finally upgrades bookmarks site, now cupcake-powered

Jackson West — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:40:00 EDT

Bare-bones but eminently useful bookmarking site Delicious has gotten a long-awaited makeover, dropping the dots that confounded copy editors ("Del.icio.us") in exchange for cupcakes. It only took two and a half years from the time Yahoo bought the startup from founder Joshua Schachter — and a month after Schachter quit Yahoo in frustration with company's bureaucracy. The new layer of visual frosting is likely meant to help give the site mass appeal, though wonky top links on the hompage like "A simple unix/linux daemon in Python - Lone Wolves - Web, game, and open source development" won't help.

Joshua Schachter joins exodus from Yahoo

Jackson West — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:40:00 EDT

Del.icio.us, along with Flickr and Upcoming, was a Web 2.0 darling acquired by Yahoo a few years ago. Also like Flickr and Upcoming, Del.icio.us hasn't rolled out much in the way of new features — though don't blame founder Joshua Schachter, who quit ~~today~~ last Wednesday. Blame Yahoo's management, who pushed Schachter aside.

I was largely sidelined by the decisions of my management. So that was mostly the result rather than the cause, if that makes sense. It was an incredibly frustrating experience and I wish I was a lot more like Stewart [Butterfield] in terms of pushing my point of view.

Our question is what took him so long? With a $15 million pay day from the sale of his startup, he could have walked away from the start to enjoy "glorious unemployment." Butterfield could have told him there was no room for tinkers at Yahoo. (Photo by Enrique Dans)

R is for Rose, who made Digg his toy

Owen Thomas — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:00:00 EDT

Kevin Rose takes up 62 out of 294 pages in Sarah Lacy's Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, her new book about Web 2.0. That's less than I expected, since Rose was the coverboy for the BusinessWeek story, co-written by Lacy, which launched her book. From the look of the index, not much time is spent on the women Rose is said to have "plowed through", as his friend Alex Albrecht once put it:

Previously:

Yahoo's social searcher fired

Owen Thomas — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:42:37 EST

Jeff Bonforte, Yahoo's vice president of "social search," was among those laid off today. Yahoo's attempts to harness its vast user base to improve search results has never borne fruit. Since Yahoo has said it's cutting back in areas not deemed critical to its future, is Bonforte's departure a sign that social search no longer matters? Unlikely, since Yahoo recently incorporated Del.icio.us, the Web bookmarking service it bought from Joshua Schachter in 2005, into its search results. And management of Yahoo Answers, another Bonforte responsibility, was moved to Europe. More likely Bonforte, ostensibly Schachter's boss, was deemed inessential to the effort. Yahoo's layer-cake bureaucracy is being sliced away.

Upcoming.org creator leaves Yahoo

Owen Thomas — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:39:40 EST

Andy Baio, the entrepreneur who created group calendar site Upcoming.org and sold it to Yahoo two years ago, is leaving the company. Not surprising that a company founder would leave after an acquisition, especially after two years, since that's a typical length of time for shares to vest under a deal's earnout provision. But Baio was part of a generation of startuppers brought in to transform Yahoo in the wake of that company's groundbreaking acquisition of Flickr — like, for example, Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter, shown here rocking out with Baio. Schachter is still a presence at Yahoo. But what's most notable about the list of people Baio thanks in his farewell post are the ones who are no longer there — or are on their way out.

Paul Levine, the GM of Yahoo Local, the group in which Upcoming found a home, left earlier this year for AdBrite. Cameron Marlow, a much-respected thinker in Yahoo Research, is also leaving, we hear. And Flickr cofounder Stewart Butterfield, who played a large role in Upcoming's acquisition, is not leaving Yahoo, as we previously reported. Sources familiar with Butterfield's thinking now say he doesn't plan to go back to running Flickr after his current paternity leave, instead finding another role within Yahoo.

(Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

Chris Anderson hates receiving spam, benefits from sending it

Megan McCarthy — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 09:00:20 EDT

Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson has had it up to here with unsolicited emails from PR agencies. But he's the beneficiary when colleagues use the tactic. Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter notes that his inbox is filled with unsolicited emails from Wired flacks. Sent to an email address, Schachter points out, which is on his blog, not one he uses to sign up for mailing lists. Call it the Long Tail of PR. Whether or not Anderson approves, he certainly gains from the PR mail-all list: The most recent Wired message touts Wednesday's edition of the PBS show Wired Science, and the subject line highlights a special appearance by Anderson himself.

The Lobby's leisurely entrepreneurs

Megan McCarthy — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:53:30 EDT

While other startup founders have to stay home and, you know, work, these guys have the time and the spare $3,000 to spend hanging out at a zero-agenda conference in Hawaii. (For the record, we're jealous.) Spotted in Yahoo executive Bradley Horowitz's Flickr stream: Benchmark entrepreneur-in-waiting Nirav Tolia; "stepped-up" LinkedIn chairman Reid Hoffman; FeedBurner founder Dick Costolo, who's rolling in Googlebucks; Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale; Evan Williams from Twitter; Mashery's Oren Michels; and
Kevin Rose (and his new haircut) from Digg with Joshua Schachter from the Yahoo-owned Del.icio.us. One question: Is this really Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg? I don't recognize him looking so unnerdly. (Photo by: bradley23)

Josh Schachter profiled, still officially young

Nick Douglas — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 15:48:15 EDT

MIT's prestigious Technology Review profiles the King of Tags, Yahoo's Joshua Schachter, and names the del.icio.us maker its Innovator of the Year.

Schachter became one of Web 2.0's favorite success stories when Yahoo bought him and his popular tagging service. We love him too, especially for how he sums up his hands-off approach with his users: "If I went in there and said, Hey, you're using that tag wrong, people would just tell me to fuck off."

Joshua Schachter, 32 [Technology Review]

The pre- and post-TechCrunch eras, part 2: "gotta go thru PR"

Nick Douglas — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 16:50:32 EDT

As I said, a growing startup should expect to one day rise above pushing publicity through A-list bloggers like TechCrunch's Michael Arrington. Today, Mike grumbles about that very phenomenon.

Mike noticed a disappointing traffic trend in Del.icio.us, a bookmark site acquired by Yahoo.

I pinged del.icio.us founder Joshua Schacter to clarify and get a comment. His response was "gotta go thru PR, alas". Oh, how times have changed - I found out about the Yahoo acquisition of del.icio.us through an open, PR-less instant message conversation with Joshua last December. In any event, I hope to get a Yahoo PR comment tomorrow on this, and have pinged the appropriate person.

Mike is justified in feeling a bit jilted. But those carefree days of chatting with the press are gone now that Del.icio.us is ruled by the Yahoo PR machine. Mike's gotta learn how to talk to the flacks, just like the rest of us.

Dazzle us again, Delicious [TechCrunch]
Earlier: Is your startup past the TechCrunch phase? [Valleywag]

West Bay Story: The Google-Yahoo rumble

Nick Douglas — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 23:24:08 EDT

9:00 P.M. Under Route 101.
It is nightfall. The almost-silhouetted gangs come in from separate sides: climbing over the fences or crawling through holes in the walls. There is silence as they fan out on opposite sides of the cleared space. Then one of the Yahoos' Sidekicks rings, and they really have to take this call, so everyone waits and a few Googlers check in on Dodgeball.

Stewart Butterfield of the Hoos and Eric Case of the Googs remove their jackets, handing them to their seconds: Joshua Schachter and Jason Shellen.

BUTTERFIELD: Ready.

CASE: Ready!

SHELLEN: Wait, I totally have to moblog this.

JEFF WEINER: The rules are clear: Our best man versus your best man.

TERRY SEMEL jumps over the fence.

TERRY: Hold it!

BUTTERFIELD: Get with the gang.

CASE: Maybe he has found the guts to fight his own battles.

TERRY [with billionaire smile]: It doesn't take guts if you have a battle. But we haven't got one, 'Caseo.

CASE: El Caseo.

TERRY: I wanted to tell you all — I'm in love with a girl named Marissa!

A rumble breaks out. In the commotion, Butterfield goes down. Shellen breaks a nail. The groups stand off.

ERNIE: It's a Razr fight!

Case and Schachter pull out Razrs. They circle each other and jab the air. This goes on for about an hour, including 20 minutes where SCHACHTER is stuck in meetings. Eventually:

SCHACHTER: You're finished, boy!

TERRY: Josh, don't! [Schachter hesitates a moment; the moment is enough for El Caseo, whose hand goes forward with a driving motion, running his Razr into Schachter. Terry leaps forward to catch Schachter. He breaks his fall, then takes the Razr in hand, leaps at the triumphant El Caseo. Terry rams his Razr into El Caseo. The kids waver, run one way, another, in panic, confusion, and fatigue from being too far from the Google snack room. As the stage is cleared, Terry stands, horrified, over the still bodies of Schachter and El Caseo. He bends over Schachter's body; then he rolls El Caseo's body over and stares. Then Terry raises his voice in an anguished cry.]
MARISSA!

Inspired by: conversations at this years gay pride parade [Little. Yellow. Different.]

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]

Who's who in Newsweek's "Putting the 'We' in Web"

ndouglas — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 12:53:42 EST

Everyone knows that Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield were made for pretty photos. Flickr's founding couple does a great job sexing up the cover of the latest Newsweek as the poster children for the new feel of the Net. In case you missed the last three years of what Newsweek calls "the Living Web," here's an intro to the cast.

Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake: Founded Flickr, a photo-sharing site. Sold to Yahoo. Current occupation: showing that Yahoo can nurture the Flickr brand.
Joshua Schachter: Founded social bookmarking site del.icio.us. Also sold to Yahoo. Current occupation: reminding people where those dots go.
Mary Hodder: Founded Dabble, a video-sharing site. Current occupation: hopefully pulling Dabble out of private beta to play with all the other vid sites.
Tim O'Reilly: Defined "Web 2.0" in an epic essay. Current occupation: Running O'Reilly Media; secretly crafting "Web 3.0" essay.
Dalton Caldwell: Founded social IM service imeem. Current occupation: throwing parties.

Next up: Wow, Newsweek gets it.

The New Wisdom of the Web [Newsweek]