Gawker: valleywag, michael gartenberg

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.

Forrester bests Jupiter at making money, making mistakes

Paul Boutin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:00:00 EDT

My esteemed colleague Owen Thomas worries that analyst firm Forrester Research, by buying its longtime rival JupiterResearch, has reduced the number of alternative opinions that will be floated in the media on any given topic. But by bringing Jupiter analysts including blogger favorite Michael Gartenberg aboard, Forrester will actually lessen the number of wrong opinions treated as near-fact by the mainstream media. I could spend a couple of days correlating Forrester vs. Jupiter on a spread of topics over the past decade. But screw it, I'm a journalist — two's a trend. Here are Forrester's two biggest misses I never forgot:

1998: Businesses will maintain separate networks for voice, video and data.

''What we try to do is demystify hype,'' Forrester's Maribel Lopez told the New York Times. ''The buzz, a lot of it has to do with data guys looking to sell the next router upgrade.''
Jupiter's Abhi Chaki disagreed, correctly calling the convergence of phone and video networks onto the Internet "an inescapable reality."

2008: Businesses will not support the iPhone for a long time.

"The features that make it a consumer success don’t necessarily translate to the enterprise," wrote Forrester analysts Benjamin Gray and Robert Whiteley. "IT can’t be expected to support each and every operating system their employees have brought into the company."
Jupiter's Gartenberg spotted the Achille's heel in Forrester's argument: If the CEO, rather than the IT guy, brings one to work, "it becomes a de facto enterprise business tool."

(Photo by Michael Neel)

The rise of the "enthusiast evangelist"

Chris Mohney — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 17:00:10 EST

Jupiter Research's Michael Gartenberg will be hopping over to Microsoft, a la Jon Udell, to serve as an "enthusiast evangelist." Whatever you think of the credibility issues such positions create, it's not like this is a new phenomenon. All you really have is a publicist with a little bit of industry celebrity, and those have been around forever. But this "enthusiast evangelist" title is odious in the extreme. When did evangelism become a positive term to anyone but evangelicals? If anyone hands me a business card with "evangelist" anywhere thereon, they better get ready to magically heal my whooping cough.