Gawker: valleywag, kourosh karimkhany

Web Expert Can't Make Website Work

Ryan Tate — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:21:11 EDT

John Batelle couldn't promote his Web summit, for want of a working website; a Wall Street Journal reporter ogled her own book and Bonnie Fuller undermined Angelina Jolie's body image. The Twitterati took self promotion to new places.

Web advertising maven John Batelle will tell you all about his $4,000 summit on "how the Web is putting the world to work," just as soon as he figures out how to get his website to... to, uh, work. Ahem.

The Wall Street Journal's Julia Angwin stopped into Barnes & Noble and did an ego check on her well written-book about a fast-cooling social network. Please no one show her Ben Mezrich's book display.

Sometime Gawker Media hand Kourosh Karimkhany officially has a point.

Would-be celeb-Web mogul Bonnie Fuller is "worried" about Angelina Jolie's health, if by "worried" you mean "publicly heckling and mocking."

Craigslist customer service rep/founder Craig Newmark had a sad. Go easy on him tomorrow, aggrieved pervy customers!

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

The Twitterati Toss Their BlackBerry at Maureen Dowd

Owen Thomas — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:48:43 EDT

Dispatches from the land of Twitteronia: Penelope Trunk and Brooke Hammerling wrestled with their relationships, while Jason Pontin and Chris Lehmann wrestled with the facts. These are the fights Twitter always wins:

Bicoastal tech PR maven Brooke Hammerling broke up with her BlackBerry.

Technology Review Twitterer-in-chief Jason Pontin let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Blogger Penelope Trunk abbreviated her relationship.

Former Condé Nast dealmaker Kourosh Karimkhany had an encounter with celebrity San Francisco crazy dude Frank Chu.

Chris Lehmann, better known as Mr. Ana Marie Cox, confused Elizabeth Edwards with Maureen Dowd.

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

Launching Tweets into the Atmosphere

Owen Thomas — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:34:55 EST

For the Twitterati, everything's up in the air! MC Hammer sailed above the rain, Laura Rich and Kourosh Karimkhany tweeted about their startup launches, and Michael Gartenberg saw Google's cloudy future:

Twentysomething CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy had flashbacks to the '90s, even though she's too young to remember them.

Recessionista Laura Rich prayed for years of a crappy economy.

Tech analyst Michael Gartenberg didn't even try to have his Google conspiracy theory make sense.

Ex-Condé Nasty Kourosh Karimkhany, also a Gawker Media alumnus, plotted the launch of his Web empire with venture capitalist Fred Wilson.

MC Hammer got on a plane because it was raining, or something.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please.

Digital dealmaker and a dozen others out at Wired

Owen Thomas — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:20:00 EST

A quarter of the 50-something employees in Wired.com's San Francisco newsroom are gone, a source tells us — and with them, the bubbly delusion that Wired would not just report on the transformation of media by technology, but be a part of the revolution as well. The cuts hit Wired's tech team heavily, though some writers and editors also got pink slips. (CNET reports that 3 out of 28 editorial staffers are gone, but a Wired insider says that the actual number of edit jobs cut is at least six.)

Also gone: Kourosh Karimkhany, the VP of corporate development for Wired.com's parent company, CondéNet. (The magazine is run separately by Condé Nast, a sister company to CondéNet.) Karimkhany did the deals to buy Reddit, an online news-discussion site; Ars Technica, a rival tech blog; and Webmonkey, a Web-technology how-to site. With no further deals planned, there wasn't much reason to keep him on, we hear. (Photo by Jackson West)

A year after Wired buyout, Reddit founders drink heavily

Owen Thomas — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:15:11 EDT

THE GALLERY LOUNGE, SOMA — Joel Sacks of AdBrite wants to have a word with me. No, nothing to do with his company's adventures in serving up porn ads; he's still pissed off about the time we caught him on video soaking himself with a pint of beer. This time, he's dry. But he's just lucky — this San Francisco bar is packed wall to wall, thanks to social-news site Reddit's open invitation for anyone to come and spill a free beer on their neighbor. The largesse comes from Reddit's owner, Conde Nast, the publisher of Wired, which bought the site a year ago. I got to meet Reddit's founders, most of whom are still, contrary to rumor, at the company. But one was, notably, missing in action: Aaron Swartz, the obstreperous Reddit cofounder who quit shortly after Conde Nast bought the site. More on the founders' status after the jump.

"He would have been welcome," says Conde Nast's Kourosh Karimkhany of Swartz. "But I don't think he could have come to the bar. He just turned 20." What is it with big media and their unseemly interest in barely-legal entrepreneurs?

Of drinking age — and deserving of a pint — is cofounder Chris Slowe. Dr. Slowe, that is. Besides the one-year anniversary of the acquisition, he's also celebrating his recently awarded Ph.D. Before I get to hear about his thesis, Leah Culver shows up. The Pownce engineer is bubbly as ever, but she has some bad news — she and Google engineer Brad Fitzpatrick have broken up. (More on that later.)

The evening is capped off, though, with an appearance by Frank Chu, the famous "12,000 Galaxies" signholder of downtown San Francisco. Now he's up to 725,000 galaxies, whatever that means. On that absurd note, I make my exit. Impressive, perhaps, that Reddit has maintained something of its startup vibe a year after its acquisition. Less impressive that free beer, on Conde Nast's tab, is what it took to spur a big geek turnout.