Gawker: valleywag, overheard

Barry Diller's finance site: "Completely pointless"

Owen Thomas — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:20:00 EDT

FiLife, a personal-finance site backed by IAC and the Wall Street Journal, is struggling, according to one ex-employee we eavesdropped on at the City Bakery, a coffeehouse in Manhattan's Flatiron neighborhood, as she interviewed for a new job. "The business model completely changed," she said. "It used to be personal finance for people in their 20s and 30s. Now it's just completely pointless." An embittered writer? Perhaps. FiLife hired a batch of journalists, only to switch gears shortly before launch and realize that the Web didn't need another content site. But their replacement — a set of automated tools to evaluate one's place in the financial pecking order — do seem pointless. The site only attracts 31,500 users a month. In this regard, FiLife is utterly typical — of both its backer and its genre.

IAC CEO Barry Diller has a ghastly track record of launching projects in-house; almost every vaguely promising Internet property he owns, he bought from someone else: Ask.com, Match.com, CitySearch, and so on.

And personal finance sites are deadly. In trying to break the mold, FiLife managed to be even more condescending than most. Its introduction:

Most personal-finance sites are snooze-filled, sometimes schoolmarmish affairs. Save more money! Don't you dare go out to dinner! Suffer, scrimp, suffer, scrimp. We're kind of tired of that approach, and we reckon you are, too.

Watching Wall Street's meltdown, would you be surprised if 20somethings were uninterested in qualifying for a mortgage and investing in mutual funds? Personal-finance sites are usually more motivated by luring advertisers than readers. The former are now in scarce supply, too.

eBay, the "lost cause," is trying to shed StumbleUpon

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:20:00 EDT

eBay has hired Deutsche Bank to help it sell procrastination tool StumbleUpon after buying it only a little more than a year ago in May 2007. The news follows an analyst's report earlier this week that the company needs to lay off 10 percent of its employees as well as an update from employee-written company reviews site Glassdoor.com that says eBay CEO John Donahoe carries only a 28 precent approval rating. Eavesdropping on a neighboring train rider yesterday, U.K. blogger Dan Wilson picked up some anecdotal evidence of eBay's internal rot as well.

He overheard an eBay executive call the company a "total lost cause." Taken by itself, the conversation, which we've copied below, comes off as just another understandably disappointed in life middle manager griping to a friend. But given the mounting bad news, doesn't train rider's rant comes off a more evidence that eBay is as "fucked" as he says?

- Didn’t you know I’m working for eBay now?
- Yeah, [redacted] months now.
- It’s fucked.
- Maybe a year ago. But it’s fucked now.
- Total lost cause.
- I’m a Senior Manager, [redacted] . Yeah, dealing with [redacted].
- They had me in for 13 interviews.
- Yeah. Fucking ridiculous.
- Fucking stupid.
- Haven’t got a clue.
- The Managing Director’s an idiot.

A Series A relationship

Paul Boutin — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:00:00 EDT

It’s refreshing, really. He’s the first guy I’ve dated who doesn’t have funding.

— One woman to another at Noe Valley's Toast Eatery in San Francisco.

Apple employee: iPhone 3G launch failure is "shitty"

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:20:00 EDT

NEW YORK — Apple's iTunes store, required for activating the new iPhone 3G is failing, causing massive chaos from coast to coast. Even Apple employees are — when they don't realize a reporter is in earshot — acknowledging this. "I can't believe there's just so much stuff going wrong," says one employee at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store as he takes his lunch break sitting next to me. "It's not very Apple-like. It's shitty. It just shouldn't happen." His friend agrees: "I called my dad and his phone still doesn't work."

SF police riot gear mix of 20th, 21st centuries

Jackson West — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:10:01 EDT

"My BlackBerry just died and we need more Polaroid film at the protest." — a San Francisco police officer, overheard by photographer Steve Rhodes.

Millennial wisdom from a scion of the hegemonic class

Jackson West — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:00:53 EDT

"I'd never work for a company that didn't offer options over and above salary." — Redheaded twentysomething to friends on a 45-Union Muni bus from the Marina to North Beach.

Facebook spends $50,000 of Microsoft's money on investor's nightclub

Owen Thomas — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:42:25 EDT

Microsoft's $200 million is not all going to buy servers, as Mark Zuckerberg would like you to think. He splashed out $50,000 to rent Pangaea, an Austin nightclub, for the week, or so a doorman said as he turned away a local the other night. Pangaea is part-owned by Ken Howery of the Founders Fund, a Facebook investor. The payoff of this cozy arrangement: When Zuckerberg needed to do damage control a day after his tragicomic keynote interview, he had a stage at the ready. (Photo by Yelp/Kevin N.)

"[Facebook] must be looking to acquire someone....

Mary Jane Irwin — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:32:04 EST

"[Facebook] must be looking to acquire someone. I've thrown together dozens of parties for them over the past few months. Its staff is something like 400 people. A few weeks ago they ordered [a party] for 1,400; the next one will be for 2,000." — overheard on Chairlift No. 4 at Kirkwood.

Overheard at CES: There's no more food!

Jordan Golson — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:28:24 EST

In the CES 2008 Press Lounge:

Me: The lunch line is out of food. They're going to revolt.
Peter Shankman: Yeah, right. Let's see all these fat, out of shape, wannabe reporters start a revolt. That would be great.

Overheard at the Flick.im party

Jordan Golson — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:43:03 EST

Some guy: So, you gonna hit the tables while you're here?
VC: Gambling is my job. When I come to Vegas, I hit the spa.

Scoble wins one

Paul Boutin — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:20:13 EST

So I'm standing next to RoboScoble at last night's Stirr mixer. Another partygoer brings up some big argument the blogosphere is having with itself over photo copyrights. Scoble gives his standard line: "Go ahead, steal my stuff. Do whatever you want with it!" Guy No. 1 responds, "Yeah you say that, but if everyone did steal all your stuff how would you pay your mortgage in Half Moon Bay?" Pause. Smirk. Scoble's reply: "That is how I pay my mortgage." There's a big lesson here for all of us, and I think it's: Robert Scoble has a house in Half Moon Bay. (Photo by Paul Boutin. Go ahead and steal it, but that doesn't mean I think Lane Hartwell should give it away, too.)

At the NewTeeVee conference: "See you later,...

Nick Douglas — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:15:03 EST

At the NewTeeVee conference: "See you later, we're getting the Google guy drunk so he buys our company."

"Once every hundred years, a Harvard man...

Paul Boutin — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:48:58 EST

"Once every hundred years, a Harvard man gets his facts right." — An MIT student's take on Zuckerberg's Law, as proclaimed by the Facebook founder this week.

"Inside every old person is a young person...

Paul Boutin — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:45:18 EST

"Inside every old person is a young person trying to figure out what the hell happened."

When Hollywood meets Silicon Valley, language...

Owen Thomas — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 19:55:56 EDT

When Hollywood meets Silicon Valley, language barriers appear. Twitter founder Evan Williams reports hearing the following angry exchange: "Programming! Writing *programs*. For their website!" [Twitter]

"Folks didn't really get it, but I think...

Nick Douglas — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 23:24:46 EDT

"Folks didn't really get it, but I think their widget says it all." — Conference organizer Jason Calacanis, offering the best defense of a company EVER.

"TechCrunch giving away Oomas? I'm seriously...

Owen Thomas — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:37:51 EDT

"TechCrunch giving away Oomas? I'm seriously over tech. I'm moving into pork bellies or something less sad."

Waggable: Tiny little fingerprints

ndouglas — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 21:21:01 EST

A hardware hacker discussing the forensics of taking apart cheap gadgets:

You can tell which ones were made by children from the tiny fingerprints in the glue.

Overheard: Ask.com has as many hits as Google?

ndouglas — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 18:56:53 EST

The weird thing about this eavesdropped line is, well, that it's so obviously wrong.

This gem was overhead at a press briefing held by Ask Jeeves... Oh wait, it's just Ask.com now, right?
"We get just as many hits as Google. But we give people just what they're looking for."

This has to mean something other than traffic, right? Because Alexa says:

Anyone have context for the quote? Would Ask.com bluff like this?

Ask.com vs. Google [Alexa]

Overheard: Microsoft called. It wants its empire back.

ndouglas — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 09:59:00 EST

A big name blogger and Microsoft employee was recently overheard at an industry event defending his employer when it was called the "Evil Empire." He said, "Two kids from Stanford stole our evil, and now we want it back."