Gawker: valleywag, merlin mann

All about those benjamins you aren't making by blogging

Melissa Gira Grant — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:00:00 EDT

Want a fantastic formula for a bit of search-engine optimized cash? Drop a bunch of blogger names into a story, add a few five- and six-figured monthly income claims, et voilà! Readers just click, click, click on it, trying to answer the question of "Why can't I make that kind of scratch?" just by being "passionate" with some "thoughts" and "feelings" on the Internet. Slate's story on blogging for real money doesn't tell you how it's done so much as throw out a few names and figures of who does. "Do we get the blogs we deserve?" Slate contributor Michael Agger asks. Kick in for my retirement fund and you can find out:

The business of blogging has been run into the ground by, as lovable former productivity fetishist Merlin Mann put it, "a gentrifying wagon train of carpetbaggers, speculators, and confidence men, all eager to pan the web's glistening riverbed for easy gold." Competing with "thought leaders" in your "space" isn't just cocky, it's foolish dollar-for-dollar. Besides, as Agger points out, the hardcore blog audience of yore is migrating to Twitter, FriendFeed, and Facebook to discover blogs — not Google, and not other blogs. The audience a baby blogger has to impress has already said, "You know what, you get 140 characters of my attention." Good luck with that.

To answer Slate's question, it depends on what you feel you deserve. If you want to join the private jet-set class, you'd be a fool to take up any form of writing as a career. But if you are blogging for your own sense of intellectual and civic pride, as fast-fading and uneasily monetized as that may be, then forget about the Benjamins. (Diagram by Jay Hathaway)

Secrets of the worst websites — revealed!

Owen Thomas — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 23:30:57 EST

Andy Baio created Upcoming.org, a plausibly good group-calendar site he sold to Yahoo. Shirt-doffing VC David Hornik of August Capital has funded some plausibly good companies like Six Apart and Splunk. The two served as judges for "Worst Website Ever," a gag panel at SXSW where entrepreneurs gave their all to the worst startup pitches they could come up with. The ideas were funny enough — Sickr, Image Search for the Blind, My Happy Netbox, and the like. (See the photo gallery, after the jump.) But there was something sour about the whole business.

Why didn't the premise of the panel sit right with me? Because venture capitalists laughing at bad startup ideas isn't subversive; it's the status quo. Sure, the crowd was rolling in the aisles. Merlin Mann killed them with his prize-winning social network for thought leaders, Flockdup, which promised to "leveragate your friends."

But in retrospect, it would have been much funnier if the comics had come up with bad pitches for really good businesses, under other names. Would Hornik have funded YouTube if it had been pitched as a way to put videos in auction listings, or Twitter as a podcasting service? (That's how each of those startups got their start, by the way.) Venture capitalists like to think they're so smart — Hornik is just a prime example of the type. If Baio had sent up the likes of Hornik, rather than his fellow entrepreneurs, the laugh might have been on the investors. For a change.

Pirates of Silicon Valley II: Our Candidates for the Cast

Nick Douglas — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:29:50 EST

NICK DOUGLAS — While dust gathers on our old VHS copies of Pirates of Silicon Valley (for us, Noah Wyle's career hit its high point with his role as Steve Jobs), it's time to cast the sequel. Starring the Daily Show's Demetri Martin as Digg founder Kevin Rose, Jason Bateman as Diggnation co-host Alex Albrecht and Rush Limbaugh as John C. Dvorak, the show also includes stars playing Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Merlin Mann, and Google's Marissa Mayer.

Alex Albrecht, Diggnation: Jason Bateman, Arrested Development

John C. Dvorak, Cranky Geeks: Rush Limbaugh

Chad Hurley, YouTube: Tobey Maguire

Leo Laporte, This Week in Tech: Anthony Hopkins

Merlin Mann, 43 Folders: Brandon Routh, Superman

Robert Scoble, Podtech: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote

Marissa Mayer, Google: Sarah Paulson, Studio 60

Bill Gates: Rick Moranis

Rupert Murdoch, News Corp: Philip Baker Hall, Magnolia

Kevin Rose: Demetri Martin, Daily Show

Photos: With a few exceptions, geeks by Scott Beale; stars by Associated Press

Adaptive Path: "I think it might be a beverage."

ndouglas — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 16:33:58 EST

Okay, Adaptive Path (yes, yes, the people in the tub of lust, everyone keeps bringing it up) is one of the few unmockable San Francisco Internet startups. It puts out an actual service, has actual offices (with REAL DESKS. Really), and it's been up and running for five years. Now it's selling bits of itself to Google and hooking up hook-up artists at anniversary parties.

But it still can't get no respect. At the latest AP party, Irina Slutsky of Geek Entertainment TV quizzed notables like HOT or NOT's James Hong and 43 Folders blogger Merlin Mann. The question: "What is Adaptive Path?" The answers: guerillas, life choices, navigating water, and maybe a beverage.

What is Adaptive Path? [GETV]