Gawker: valleywag, mena trott

Six Apart founders return from Disneyland, mouse ears held high

Owen Thomas — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:00:00 EST

All right, all right: Perhaps it was a tad bit mean-spirited to begrudge young parents their first vacation to Disneyland with a child. Six Apart president Mena Trott, who spent the weekend in the happiest place on earth with husband and CTO Ben Trott, is hilariously unapologetic about taking a vacation right after laying off 16 staff members at the blog-software company they cofounded. Beating Valleywag to the punch, she's written the worst captions she could invent on pictures of her highly adorable daughter and way hot husband at the theme park. Not that this will be any comfort to the people she laid off, who will only remember how Trott followed up the cuts by announcing that she was going to Disneyland in the manner of an NFL player who just spiked a football in the end zone.

Layoffs? They're going to Disneyland!

Owen Thomas — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 04:00:00 EST

Six Apart, the San Francisco blog-software company which helped spark the blogging boom, just laid off 16 of its 200 employees. And its top executives took a 15 percent paycut. Such noble sacrifice! Except that those cutbacks have not crimped the holiday plans of cofounders Ben and Mena Trott. She surprised her husband with an irony-free trip to Disneyland. That they can so blithely afford the trip reminds me of persistent rumors that the couple cashed out some of their shares in the privately held company when it took an earlier round of venture capital. (Photo by Jackson West)

Journalists do it for the lulz

Owen Thomas — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:00:00 EDT

The trolls will always be with us, because the Internet is full of insane sociopaths. Charming sociopaths, clever sociopaths, perhaps even magazine-profile-worthy sociopaths — but sociopaths all the same. Wired profiled a videogame-heavy set of Internet trolls in January. The New York Times Magazine hunted and nabbed bigger game this weekend — Jason Fortuny and the troll known as "Weev," who was photographed for the story (above). This photo in particular may draw fascinated stares.

At one point, Weev says that he's the hacker known as Memphis Two. "Weev says he has access to hundreds of thousands of Social Security numbers," Matt Schwartz writes in the Times piece. "About a month later, he sent me mine." Now Schwartz knows how Six Apart cofounders Ben and Mena Trott feel.

Their Social Security numbers, as well as those of other Six Apart executives and investors, were leaked on the Internet last year. At the time, a tipster told us he believed that Memphis Two, working in conjunction with a Six Apart employee, was responsible. While working on an unrelated story, I received a call from someone who identified themselves as Weev; the caller ID indicated the call came from Technorati, a startup located one block from Six Apart's headquarters. How can such a small world contain such a large hate?

(Photo by Robbie Cooper/New York Times)

Mena Trott's future millions to fund daughter's therapy sessions

Owen Thomas — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:40:00 EDT

In June, Six Apart's Mena Trott told a CBS reporter, on camera, that she thought her baby was ugly. "Babies that age are kind of meh," she said. "I mean, Penelope has always been cute in our eyes, but looking back at pictures we think 'this is cute?' Not throw-up ugly, but definitely not as cute as now." Her comments did not air, but she inexplicably posted them on her blog, where Penelope — who is actually very cute, as the above still shows — will surely read them years from now. Her husband Ben, who cofounded the blog-software maker, made it on TV with an appropriately fatherly statement: "We just actually feel that she is that cute." Ben, who's pretty cute himself, has always been the shyer one in the Trott family. But we're starting to think he might have the makings of a better spokesperson than the loose-lipped Mena. Ben's TV appearance:

Mena Trott revisits her lost youth on YouTube

Owen Thomas — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:40:00 EDT

Is Six Apart cofounder Mena Trott already getting bored with the tribulations of new motherhood? She took a break from raising future superblogger Penelope Trott, who surely coded Movable Type templates in the womb, to create a video imagining what she would have done had YouTube been around when she was 16. Having met Mena, née Grabowski, when she was an actual teenager, I can say this for her skills as a self-documentarian: two thumbs up for accuracy.

Enabler of teenage girls' blogs officially no longer punk rock

Owen Thomas — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:00:00 EDT

Six Apart cofounder Mena Trott turned 30 last September. But the new mom didn't become officially old until today. Welcome to adulthood, Mena. [Twitter]

Six Apart exiles its troublesome child to Russia

Owen Thomas — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 02:53:24 EST

Since acquiring LiveJournal in 2005, Six Apart has gotten little but grief from the blogging site. Now, at last, it's gotten some cash. The San Francisco-based blog-software company has sold LiveJournal to Sup, a Russian media concern. Ostensibly, the purchase of LiveJournal two years ago was meant to improve Six Apart's Web technology and accelerate its entry into ad-supported blog publishing. Instead?

LiveJournal's boisterous users taxed Six Apart's already stretched management. Fan-fiction writers, whose output was often not for the squeamish, made the site a home. So-called "griefers," apparently dissatisfied with a tightening of site policies, published executives' Social Security numbers. Founder Brad Fitzpatrick noisily quit the company to join Google. Users mocked an ill-conceived advertising campaign by sending then-CEO Barak Berkowitz 527 virtual "gifts" of Diet Pepsi Max icons, defacing his profile.

Berkowitz stepped down in September, replaced by Chris Alden, an executive who ran the company's money- and sense-making business, the paid blogging products TypePad and Movable Type. With the sale of LiveJournal, Alden's reign looks likely to be far less entertaining than Berkowitz's. That's a good thing for Six Apart, if not for gossips.

As for LiveJournal, Sup has made grand promises about respecting the community and appointing an editorial advisory board. Sup already operates the Russian-language version of the site, and is run by Andrew Paulson, an American entrepreneur. But let's be real: This is a company operating in Vladimir Putin's Russia, where the media increasingly is falling under state control, either explicitly or tacitly. One does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to find this prospect discomfiting.

Whatever happens to LiveJournal and its users won't be Six Apart's problem. Ben and Mena Trott, Six Apart's founders, are far too polite to say this about their LiveJournal adventure. But they should: "Goodbye, and good riddance."

Six Apart founders' heir presumptive

Owen Thomas — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:48:48 EDT

Who is Penelope Trott? According to a Twitter sent by Six Apart executive Anil Dash, a close confidante of Ben and Mena Trott, the founders of the blog-software company, she's made him "smile all day." We can only guess that Penelope is the name of the Trotts' long-expected offspring. If so, congratulations. We await the day when Mena and Ben bring their daughter to work and declare, "Some day, all of this will be yours. Well, except for the parts we sold off to our venture capitalists."

Six Apart considered a LiveJournal and Vox spinoff

Megan McCarthy — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 19:00:37 EDT

We just heard an outlandish rumor: That San Francisco-based blogging company Six Apart, whose software powers many of the world's most popular blogs, considered splitting in two earlier this year, under former CEO Barak Berkowitz. But the company recently upgraded its CEO, replacing Berkowitz with executive Chris Alden, and a spinoff or sale is no longer on the table. By shedding its LiveJournal and Vox consumer blogging sites, Six Apart would have left behind enterprise blog service TypePad and the Movable Type software product — exactly the businesses new CEO Chris Alden ran before his promotion, which is likely why this old rumor is gaining fresh circulation.

A spinoff would have had financial appeal, of course, given the fad for social networks these days and Facebook's lofty mooted valuation. That is, of course, assuming Six Apart could have come to terms with a deep-pocketed buyer. But taking money off the table is the only aspect of this rumored deal that would have made sense.

First, there's technology. Six Apart executives have long maintained that the company's enterprise and consumer blog businesses complement each other, and share a lot of their core software. (An upcoming version of TypePad, the Web-based blog software popular with small businesses, will have new community features based largely on Vox, we hear.)

Then there's the founders' pride. Would Ben and Mena Trott have supported Movable Type and TypePad, the businesses they built up from scratch? Or would they have thrown their attentions to LiveJournal, the fractious personal-blogging service Six Apart acquired a couple of years ago, and Vox, the newer blog-cum-social network that's especially close to Mena's heart?

And then there's the IPO factor. With its combined businesses, Six Apart's revenue streams are nicely diversified between subscription fees, software licenses, and advertising. And even so, the company is barely big enough to draw investment banks' interest. Separately, its consumer and enterprise arms would have been more acquisition bait than anything.

So for now, a spinoff, having been considered and apparently dismissed some months ago, seems unlikely. But we do know that at least one member of the board is meeting with Alden, the new CEO, tomorrow. We can only wonder what they'll chat about. Anyone heard anything else? Please share. (Illustration by Tim Faulkner)

Happy birthday to the Trotts

Owen Thomas — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:28:54 EDT

It's a big year for Ben and Mena Trott, the husband-and-wife founders of Six Apart. The blog-software company was named after their six-days-apart birthdays; Mena just turned 30 yesterday, while Ben begins his fourth decade on Saturday. (Such a cradle-robber, that Mena.) Six Apart's board of directors just gave Mena the best present a founder could ask for — a new CEO, in the form of the eminently capable and blogging-savvy Chris Alden. Putting Alden, the former CEO of the Red Herring (back when it was an authority on tech, not its current incarnation) in charge should do much to clear up the company's bouts of less-than-transparent behavior. It's hard to top that kind of gift. So if you're in a generous mood, save it for the next generation of Trotts. The Trottlet, as some around the Six Apart office call Ben and Mena's next product release, is expected next month, according to their baby registry.

LiveJournal creator leaves as Six Apart fails to spin

Owen Thomas — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:25:59 EDT

Word is that Brad Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal and chief architect of Six Apart, is leaving the troubled blog-software company. And the fact that you're hearing about from a gossip blog rather than the transparency-loving company is itself a sign of how deep the problems run. Fitzpatrick, who sold his company, Danga Interactive, to Six Apart two years ago, has vested his shares, declared his boredom with Six Apart, and after weighing offers from Google and Facebook, has chosen to head to Google, a source close to Fitzpatrick says. The only reason that Six Apart management hasn't announced it, the source adds, is that they can't figure out how to spin it. Here, let me help, guys! It's bad. And Fitzpatrick's departure is just the tip of Six Apart's reality-denying iceberg.

Six Apart is in two separate businesses — selling blog software and services to big companies, and managing social networks LiveJournal and Vox. The two don't mesh well, and it shows. CEO Barak Berkowitz's corporate-running-dog background has not prepared him at all for dealing with feisty online users, and his ineptness was on display in the recent fan-fiction censorship scandal.

Mena Trott, Six Apart's president and cofounder, is normally the company's most effective spokesperson. When she can be prevented from swearing, that is. But we haven't seen much from her recently.

And Andrew Anker is still listed as being in charge of the company's consumer business on its website. But I know that he's moved into a corporate-development role — which I think is Silicon Valley code for "trying to find someone to buy the company."

On top of that, there's last month's 365 Main outage, which knocked the company's sites offline — not Six Apart's fault, except in that it didn't bother to get a backup data center, as most high-traffic websites do. And the rushed release of Movable Type 4.0, the company's cash-cow blog software line.

Not that Six Apart's problems, copious as they are, and difficult as they are to fess up to, are much of a reason for Fitzpatrick to stay. Teaching Berkowitz how not to sound like a n00b when talking to LiveJournal members? Likely impossible. Fixing Movable Type's bugs? Booooring. Listening to Trott's swearing fits? Exciting, from a distance.

As Fitzpatrick put it himself in late June:

In the short term, I'm going to see what's possible here, but this boredom can't go on much longer before I snap. I need to be in a team of excited, fast-moving people stressing the fuck out (in a fun way) on challenging and important problems. I miss that.

The damning implication, of course, being that Six Apart lacks both excited, fast-moving people and challenging and important problems. No wonder Fitzpatrick is leaving.

Assuming his plan to join Google proceeds as planned, Fitzpatrick's likely to become both a respected engineer and an effective liaison to open-source developers. Google has, despite its efforts, a mixed reputation in the open-source world. Fitzpatrick, by contrast, is almost universally beloved by geeks for releasing the open-source components that make LiveJournal run. When he reveals that he wrote memcached, they squeal about as readily as 14-year-old girls do when they learn he's the creator of LiveJournal. Google has considerably more code for Fitzpatrick to play with — and a bigger stage for him to play on.

And for Six Apart? Expect more drama, nonstop, and less-than-transparent explanations of it from company management. Fitzpatrick did this favor for them, at least: Six Aparters can always whine about it to their friends on LiveJournal.

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.

The pregnant A-lister comes out

Owen Thomas — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:59:05 EDT

Mena Trott, cofounder and president of Six Apart, the blog-software company, is pregnant. There, I said it — and now, so has she. Trott blames her superstitions as a first-time mother for keeping the pregnancy a secret for so long. The lack of disclosure, though, has been uncharacteristic for Trott who, as a spokesperson for her company, has long made blogging about herself an integral part of Six Apart's publicity strategy. Six Apart's new blogging site, Vox, however, makes it easier to keep some posts limited to a small circle of readers — which is part of how Trott kept her pregnancy quiet. For a blogger, work and home life are never far apart.

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)

Remainders: Will Wired hire Amanda Congdon to play banjo?

Nick Douglas — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 20:53:10 EDT

Om Malik, who believes companies don't do anything once, polls his readers: Who will Wired buy next? [GigaOM]
Hey look, it's Six Apart co-founder Mena Trott playing the banjo and swearing! Ha! Ha! We Valley types sure know how to have fun! [Abazab]
Reporting Time Warner's falling stock is always tougher when that stock is your retirement fund. [CNN Money]
Mysterious social network company Socializer says it's been around since 2002 — and invites you to join its private beta. [Socializer]
the front page at Ookles.com, which used to say "coming soon," is now an empty page. The site isn't stillborn, it's just prepping for public release, says the founder. [Ookles]
The exec producer of VH1's "Best Week Ever" tells Rocketboom's ex-host, "Get to work - the clock is ticking and 90 days from now, it's going to be 'what the fuck happened to Amanda Congdon?'" [BuzzMachine]

Web Infinity Plus One SloshCon: Thanks, sponsors!

Nick Douglas — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 19:21:30 EDT

Are you coming to this Thursday's Web Infinity Plus One SloshCon? Of course you are! It's free and there's an open bar!

Check out who's coming — Canadian Flockstar Will Pate, Digg hottie Kevin Rose, media maven Irina Slutsky of GETV, and so many more! Sign up or just stumble in!

And thanks to the $100 sloshcon sponsors — which now include WordPress.com owner Automattic, Mena Trott of Six Apart, Gabriel Venture Partners, Digg, STIRR Network, and Laughing Squid. Silver $250 sponsors are Topix.net and Valleywag owner Gawker Media.

Booze! Shouting! TV coverage (no seriously)! Get ready to get drunk and argue about the Internet (and those damn humanity-killing robots) this Thursday night at San Francisco's House of Shields!

Web Infinity Plus One: The SloshCon [Upcoming]

Valleywag Web Infinity Plus One Conference — Next Thursday!

Nick Douglas — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 21:33:05 EDT

No joke, we're holding a Web Infinity Plus One Conference at the House of Shields a week from today! The top room's reserved and the sponsors are ponying up for the bar tab. The deets:

Where: San Francisco bar House of Shields
When: Thursday, 8 June, 9ish PM
What: Live GETV interview by Irina Slutsky; impromptu drunk speeches; OPEN BAR
Why: To make a paper trail so Valleywag can pull an O'Reilly.
$100 Sponsors: Automattic; Mena Trott of Six Apart; STIRR Network; Gawker Media ($250)

Oh boy there's more! Watch Valleywag every day til then for updates on the Best Night This Side of the Singularity!

Web Infinity Plus One: The SloshCon [RSVP on Upcoming.org]
HoS photo: Web 1.0 Summit [Scott Beale on Flickr]

Misquoting Mena Trott

ndouglas — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 17:21:44 EST

Mena Trott loves bloggers. The Six Apart co-founder cares about her husband and business partner. She is a good and decent person.

Which is why it's so fun to unfairly quote the blog-software queen out of context. Like these lines from her talk at SXSW 2006:

"Bloggers are stupid."

And:

"Talk about small teams... It doesn't get much smaller than a husband and a wife in a bedroom."