Gawker: valleywag, norbum

Lodwick doesn't mock homeless, but may in the future

Tim Faulkner — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:30:25 EST

Jakob Lodwick has burst our balloon: the fameballer has taken time from his vacation in Mexico to deny any involvement with norbum.org and its tasteless homeless fashion contest (although he does reserve the right to make fun of the homeless in the future). Lodwick did create the "norbum" name and has purchased several domain names related to his new startup. It's no surprise that the site was attributed to the Web exhibitionist. But Lodwick says his new startup — a music-production venture, we hear — will not be ready for publicity for another couple months. But when it is, will whatever stunt he engineers surpass the attention he could have garnered by mocking the poor? (Photo by Zach Klein)

Tumblr creator doesn't find the homeless funny

Tim Faulkner — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:00:39 EST

David Karp, the creator of Tumblr, may be working on a new project with the attention-seeking Jakob Lodwick, but he doesn't want anything to do with Lodwick's attention-seeking means. Karp called Silicon Alley Insider while on vacation in Puerto Rico to deny any involvement with the Norbum project:

I'm not involved with Norbum, I don't know what it is, and I would never make fun of homeless people.

The blogging-tool creator may be willing to take Lodwick's money and share some office space with him, but the duo's involvement has yet turned the young developer into a fameballing clone of Lodwick. (Photo by Marco Arment)

Lodwick's latest project is homeless humor

Tim Faulkner — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:24:56 EST

Amateur attention seeker and entrepreneur Jakob Lodwick may be releasing a new project soon with David Karp, the creator of blogging tool Tumblr. Lodwick recently cut ties with both his beau, Julia Allison, and Connected Ventures, the startup he founded, now controlled by IAC and best known for Vimeo and College Humor. Without Barry Diller's backing or Allison's cleavage, how will the pasty, shirtless hipster generate the buzz he's grown to expect but rarely deserves? By mocking the homeless.

CenterNetworks observed that norbum.org, a domain recently purchased by Lodwick, briefly went live with the message:

Norbum.org is an open, crowd-sourced, web 2.0 application powered by Tumblr. Why the name "Norbum"? Simply put, Norbum is like Nordstrom for the homeless. We bring to you the latest in urban street fashion from the people who live it. Rather than relying on an elitist group of professional editors, we invite our readers to submit photos of the most stylish street people from around the world. If you spot one of these edgy trendsetters, just snap a photo and email it to 2tvazf87@tumblr.com. We'll post the best ones to Norbum.org.

Lodwick's fashion sense has its own affinity with the homeless. But Norbum is clearly an attempt at attention-grabbing humor. I'll concede the attention-grabbing part — I'm writing about it, aren't I? — but the humor, after one weak chuckle, escaped me. Without Allison, without his partners at Connected Ventures, Lodwick's limits are becoming more easily glimpsed. And less watchable every day.