Gawker: valleywag, liz gannes

Twitter Co-Founder Disses Own Condo Furnishings

Ryan Tate — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:32:43 EDT

Evan Williams kissed up to his wife via dissing his penthouse; Kevin Smith had a little freakout and Kevin Pollak made some sort of barbed remark involving Canada. The Twitterati were comparing and contrasting.

NewTeeVee's Liz Gannes finds certain software downright offensive.

Twitter's Evan Williams explained that his for-sale penthouse looks like a Pier 1 catalog because his uber-chic wife didn't do the staging.

Director Kevin Smith was on a sugar high.

DC TV reporter Brian Bolter bemoaned the media world he leaves to his children.

American actor Kevin Pollak observed that Canada is looking more like America every day. And that's not a good thing.

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

NewTeeVee Station launches, tracking Web-video contagion

Owen Thomas — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

The plague of viral video has an epidemiologist: NewTeeVee Station, a spinoff of GigaOm's NewTeeVee, a blog which tracks the online-video industry. "Basically, we think this online video stuff is more and more legit," NewTeeVee editor Liz Gannes IM'd me earlier today. "We are betting on that, and treating it like a real entertainment medium." Liz Shannon Miller, pictured, will edit NewTeeVee Station's reviews of popular videos. First up: YouTube sensation Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance." More importantly than just describing the videos, the site will track who made the videos, who appeared in them, who funded them, and whether they profited. (Laipply, for example, hasn't made money off YouTube, but he did get on Oprah.)

Get ready for GigaOm TV

Owen Thomas — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:14:25 EDT

We asked, and Kara Swisher of AllThingsD.com helpfully answered: Om Malik is launching a television show with Revision3, the online-video site cofounded by Digg's Kevin Rose and now run by Jim Louderback, theman who made a well-timed exit from PC magazine. The deal was thinly disguised, since Revision3's PR firm was the one to send out invites for a party Malik's holding tonight to celebrate the deal. The result of the partnership is called "The GigaOm Show," and will cover many of the same personalities who pop up in Malik's GigaOm blog. But now, here's the question that Swisher didn't ask — and should have.

How will NewTeeVee, GigaOm's news site about online video, cover Revision3? "With a disclosure," says Malik matter-of-factly. Well, sure. That's the right thing to do. But NewTeeVee already partners with Metacafe for its Pier Screenings events, and it has a host of prominent sponsors in the field it covers. Om Malik is at heart a journalist, and NewTeeVee's Liz Gannes is a sharp young reporter. But I worry, that with the welterwork of disclosures, disclaimers, and digressions they're going to have to slap on the site, that it will end up either unreadable or untrustworthy.

None of that, of course, makes "The GigaOm Show" anything less than a must-watch. So far Malik has scheduled Rob Glaser of RealNetworks, Bill Watkins of Seagate, and James Hong of HotorNot for on-screen interviews. Malik's a sharp, impatient questioner, which should make for good TV. He'd better hope so, anyway. Otherwise, things are going to get ugly at GigaOm headquarters when Gannes finds herself forced to pan him.

Pownce founders party in pot-laden pleasure palace

Megan McCarthy — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:38:32 EDT

MEGAN MCCARTHY — "Pownce is the new pink," declared Valleywag's capricious new editor Owen Thomas in assigning me to go cover a party thrown by Leah Culver and Kevin Rose, cofounders of Digg. The new pink? More like the new pot. The microblogging site, which people use to send around URLs, MP3s, and updates on their lives, is just as coveted — invitations are still up for sale on eBay — and seems to leave its users just as unproductive. So what better place to hold a party than a pink castle of a house in the Castro owned by Dennis Peron, one of the heads of California's medical marijuana movement? A list of Internet-glamorous attendees, a crime scene, and a photo gallery, after the jump.

Peron's place, which Culver is renting, is amazing. The backyard is built like a treehouse, with hidden stairways leading to the an outbuilding that doubles as a blacklight garden and hot tub. A model of the Golden Gate bridge serves as a walkway connecting the second floor to the guesthouse. Oh, and there are full-grown pot plants everywhere you turn.

The party had the feel of a high-school kegger, as if Web 2.0 High prom king Kevin Rose had convinced his venture capitalists to go away for the weekend and leave the liquor cabinet stocked. Pownce cofounder Leah Culver danced around the kitchen lip-synching to "Lip Gloss." On a screen, Randi Jayne, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's sister, debuted her latest viral video, a very clever iPhone parody. By 11 p.m., the kegs were kicked, and people stood around holding red plastic cups, hoping in vain for more liquor. Attendees included just about every boldfaced name from the San Francisco Web scene: StumbleUpon's Garrett Camp; Om Malik and Liz Gannes from GigaOm; Sarah Lane, Martin Sargent, and David Prager from Revision3; and recent New York Times profile subject David Ulevitch from OpenDNS.

And of course, there was some drama. A group of wannabe gangbangers walked into the party and, eyewitnesses say, walked out with a MacBook and at least one purse. My purse, to be exact. After I noticed that my purse was missing, three of the alleged thieves came back to the party, apparently hoping to steal more stuff. Partygoers detained one of them, who was then arrested by San Francisco police on a conspiracy charge. Good thing they didn't check out the back yard. For a glimpse of the scene, here's a gallery:

To-Do today: Prepare to be boarded!

Nick Douglas — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:50:59 EDT

Yarrr, talk like a pirate today. Especially if you work at Bittorrent. [Talk Like a Pirate Day]
Take the afternoon off to see TechReach International demonstrate rapid communications deployment in a simulated emergency situation. Starts at 1 in Intuit's parking lot. [Upcoming]
Are you the kind of sicko who goes to Stones concerts to see if Mick will finally have a heart attack on stage? Then get a front seat for MobiTV's talk at the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, "Television Breaks Out of the Box: The Mad Rush to go Mobile." When will MobiTV's founders realize, "Holy shit, I just got another $70 million in financing, and I have to give my investors at least a double return on that," causing their brains to spontaneously combust? Maybe onstage, and you'll be left to tell the tale! [MIT/Stanford VLAB]
The dull title of "New Trends in Media Distribution" belies the fun that videoblogger Irina Slutsky (of Geek Entertainment TV) and GigaOM tech blogger Liz Gannes bring to tonight's panel in downtown San Francisco. [Upcoming]