Gawker: valleywag, recap

The week that just wasn't funny

Paul Boutin — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:05:45 EST

We make fun of everything here, even death. But it's still too soon to laugh over the three SiPort employees gunned down by a coworker, or the misguided teenager who overdosed live on Justin.tv. That said, next week will be open season on the newest little Googler and Barack Obama's Warcraft-addicted policymaker. Life goes on, and we have a job to do. (Photo by acaben)

The week Valleywag got bigger than ever

Paul Boutin — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:00:00 EST

Dear readers: Please don't overreact. Valleywag 2009 will have the exact same headcount as Valleywag 2007 — but an order of magnitude more readers. Owen Thomas will run the site all by himself, with me dropping in to blog once in a while. If anything, Owen (photo, left) will be meaner than before. Just look at this week.

Facebook investor Peter Thiel got outed — not just as gay, but a gay who opposes immigration. Sun cofounder Bill Joy got taken in the Manhattan real-estate market. Author Sarah Lacy got a taste of her own medicine. And President Change dumped both radio and Twitter. But no one got mauled like America's CTO, Google boss Eric Schmidt. Worst of all for those guys: They're all fair game for Owen when the new Valleywag debuts.

The week we failed to disclose

Owen Thomas — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:00:00 EST

Nobody wanted to fess up this week. Sergey Brin's journalist mother-in-law can't come out and say that she's in the tank for Google. Wall Street Journal conference organizer Kara Swisher won't confess that she's mean to Google precisely because the search engine employs her newly married spouse. And that's just the beginning.

VentureBeat blogger MG Siegler doesn't want to admit he's dating Pownce founder Leah Culver, though their affair is surely the only reason he thought an outage of the little-used site was newsworthy. Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg won't say that a Washington job might be the reason she's defending ex-boss Larry Summers. Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk is mum on why he let the carmaker get so short on cash, but we have a theory on why. Can anyone just come out and say it? We're all too human — which is the thing we hate to admit most of all. (Photo by unclebumpy)

The week we prepared to fall back

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:00:00 EDT

In theory, Fondue's two BlackBerrys will reset from Daylight Savings Time back to PST automatically this Sunday. In practice, she'll be sorry she ate the manual. Ah, if only we, too, were Jason Calacanis's bitch. The CEO of Mahalo, a bluster-powered search engine, treats his dogs better than his employees. Will Facebook join Mahalo in laying people off?

Not if CFO Gideon Yu returns from the Middle East with a fistful of petrodollars. In New York, Googlers' stomachs now rumble as snacks get cut back. Tesla Motors, the electric carmaker, is feeling starved, too — of cash. It's down to its last $9 million, with only vague promises that investors will pony up more. Scary! Don a mask and put a fright in someone else for a change.(Photo by Jason Calacanis)

The week we came out against Proposition 8

Owen Thomas — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 21:00:00 EDT

Valleywag's publisher, gay-owned Gawker Media, has yet to take a public stand on Proposition 8, California's proposed gay-marriage ban. But that's okay! Neither has Yahoo. But we're always in favor of man-on-man action — like the sweaty seat-wrestling that will come after Forbes.com merges with its print-magazine namesake. What other stories made us feel gay?

The Valley's least essential blowhards all boarded the same jet for a Hawaiian vacation, courtesy of their investors, at VC David Hornik's faux conference, The Lobby. Yahoos buzzed about layoffs (while Valleywag lurked in the airwaves). Google boss Eric Schmidt, aka America's CTO, may have gotten his own fighter jet — while some Googlers went hungry. (Photo of Justin Rudd and Rosie via HauteDogs)

Lay off, already

Owen Thomas — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:00:00 EDT

Layoffs, layoffs, layoffs, layoffs, Elvis impersonator, report of layoffs disappears, layoffs, layoffs, layoffs by blog post, layoffs, layoffs, rumor of layoffs, layoffs, layoffs, PDF layoff. On a brighter note, Valleywag has hired Jason Calacanis, according to ZDNet. How was your week? (Screenshot from Jason Calacanis's Flickr)

Two bulldogs for EVERYONE

Paul Boutin — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:00:00 EDT

Yeah, I know: The world is ending. You can flip through Sequoia Capital's 56-slide preso on it. Still, in the middle of what he dubbed the Startup Depression, Mahalo chatterbox-in-chief Jason Calacanis has added more staff-generated content. What Calacanis knows that Sequoia won't tell you: Up or down, a lot has to do with your ability to sell a story. Too bad your boss the wannabe general won't have to sell you on that "painful but necessary adjustments" story in the works. Keep those lame layoff memos coming.

You guys go on ahead, I'm fine

Paul Boutin — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 20:00:00 EDT

Is everyone done blogging about Valleywag's layoffs? I'm still here. I'm the "one other" the New York media deigned to mention. It's exactly like being the 80 percent of Yahoo that won't be laid off, if that 80 percent was one guy. Melissa, Jackson and Nicholas are good writers. All three will probably be making more money soon. For me, at least the rest of the week didn't hit so hard. Google's stock drop had no effect on my personal net worth — take that, Kara Swisher! Facebook's star engineer quit, but I've gotten used to the Ajax errors when I try to reply to high school friends at quarter to midnight. Anyway, next week I'll be here, Owen will be here, and hopefully you'll still be here. Keep those Steve Jobs heart attack tips coming. Those are the best. (Photo of Taurus the not-laid-off wonderdog by Jason Calacanis)

A week that melted us down

Owen Thomas — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:20:00 EDT

The markets are imploding and Washington is dickering. What is Silicon Valley doing? Thinking about cupcakes, cutbacks, and cushy relationships with sources. Google's Larry Page is so out of touch that he went to D.C. to whine for more bandwidth for all of his Googlephones to come. And fabulously wealthy VC Tom Perkins? He's bringing his megayacht home, the better to sell it some even more nouveau rich guy to buy. Has he looked up Kevin Rose, we wonder? (Photo by sanfranannie)

A week in which there was nothing wrong with that

Owen Thomas — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:00:00 EDT

After announcing a multimillion-dollar campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld, Microsoft canned the comic's commercials with founder Bill Gates. Not "canned" as in "fired," but "canned" as in "put away for later." Maybe. eBay's also thinking about dumping StumbleUpon, the social something-or-other site it bought last year for $75 million. Facebook users want to trash the site's redesign. Sarah Palin seems to have deleted her hacked Yahoo Mail account. Amidst all of this relinquishing of things material and immaterial, some of our colleagues threw a party on a rooftop in New York. Here's an archive of the live coverage, via a Justin.tv feed:

(Photo by diametrik)

A week in which we didn't cheat on Taurus and Fondue

Jackson West — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:00:00 EDT

TechCrunch50 was rigged. Rigged to make you fall in love with Taurus and Fondue all over again! Blah Girls founder Ashton Kutcher is working hard to keep up with the dynamic duo in this picture. We know, being an entrepreneur is risky — even Google cofounder Larry Page once hedged his bets early on, and now he's sponsoring space ships. Just don't overwork those engineers, get your teams working together, and keep your core audience happy. And remember to relax. So go crash tonight's Girl Talk concert at Yahoo and do the robot, Bill Gates-style. (Photo by TechCrunch50-2008)

Lazy from the heat

Paul Boutin — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:00:00 EDT

It's 92 degrees Fahrenheit here, and we haven't had a break all week. Our holiday Monday was disrupted by the accidental announcement of Google's new browser, Chrome, via a comic strip delivered a day early to a German blogger. The comic proved unreadable except to programmers, but 4chan Photoshops of it were huge. X-Files star David Duchovny turned himself in for rehab after acknowledging his ... um, porn addiction? That was funnier than the new Microsoft ads starring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. It was more serious than any of the coverage of the Republican national convention — our most clicked video was the footage of dancing delegates. From which we gather that it's not 92 in Minneapolis. (Photo by Jason Calacanis)

A week that left us feeling burnt

Owen Thomas — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:00:00 EDT

Bad Googler! No biscuit! We love Google's spin on our free-meals exposé this week: A detailed statistical analysis has revealed that some cafes are less heavily used for dinner, and so they're very scientifically closing them. The reality: A feud between Google and its food-service contractor, Bon Appétit, has led to such massive turnover in the ranks of Google's cooks that Larry and Sergey are struggling to put food on the table. No wonder they, and much of the rest of Google, have headed to the desert for Burning Man. Just two questions: Who's cooking their camp chow? And who's going to fix Gmail if it breaks down again this weekend? (Photo by Jason Calacanis)

A week we could have kissed

Owen Thomas — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:00:00 EDT

Will John McCain pick former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as his running mate? We can guess what a McCain-Whitman platform looks like: No new taxes, but higher listing fees. Valley Democrats, deeming the election a formality, are already lining up to be Obama's CTO. We think Robert Scoble's angling for the job, but Obama would be wise to consider how Seagate has fared as the sponsor of Scoble's videos. Who's going to get all these plum political positions? We'll read about it in tomorrow's papers — if there are any left. (Photo by AP/Dharapak, photoillustration by Paul Boutin)

A week we'd never lie about

Owen Thomas — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:00:00 EDT

Sheryl, Sheryl, Sheryl. It's been quite a week, for us and for Facebook's COO. Sheryl Sandberg isn't the kind to yell, like the 10 tyrants we featured this week. She's much more subtle than that. Or at least we thought she was, until she botched product marketer Ben Ling's high-profile return from Facebook to Google. Sheryl, sounds like you need some advice on how to end a relationship. May we suggest talking to Pownce's Leah Culver? (Photo by tifotter)

A week in which we caught Olympic fever

Jackson West — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:00:00 EDT

We tried almost everything anyone suggested to find a cure for our Olympic fever, even watching Chinese state television in silence and hacking into YouTube before figuring out exactly how we are going to watch the summer games online. Gavin Newsom's too busy in Africa bumping uglies with his new wife to care, but such is life when you are rich. Newsom didn't propose via Google Street View, but his buddies Larry Page and Sergey Brin did ferry guests to the wedding — new wife Jennifer Siebel had better hope the marriage lasts, because otherwise, guess who's side the Mountain View search giant will take. Speaking of infidelity, Apple is selling iPhones with Windows Mobile devices, PayPal is spending more time with other lovers besides eBay, and Google seems about ready to dump that cheap slut AOL.(Photo by Tiff)

A week in which we didn't mention Jason Calacanis

Jackson West — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:00:00 EDT

Okay, we mentioned him once, briefly — still, not enough to keep Calacanis from demanding that we use a picture of his dogs Taurus and Fondue scarfing Pinkberry. Watch out, Calacanis, because if Obama wins those dogs might unionize and collectively bargain for more froyo. We're just glad the Southlanders survived the earthquake with their private parts intact so that they could live to self-destructively tweet away another day — everyone's doing it, even the Mars lander. And while science fiction novelist Orson Scott Card may have betrayed his gay fans, you can at least count on Justin.tv co-founder Justin Kan to keep lobbying publicly for a centerfold in Honcho — though, starlets aside, maybe young master Peter Cashmore of Mashable might sell more magazines.

Jackson West, please come home — all is forgiven

Owen Thomas — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:00:00 EDT

Why did I let Jackson West take a vacation? While our associate editor was away, we actually wrote something nice about Gavin Newsom — and he only had to save San Francisco from a rogue IT guy to do it! Microsoft's Windows chief, Kevin Johnson, ended up in Sunnyvale, Calif. — but not, as he'd hoped, in the corner office at Yahoo HQ. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg flubbed more media interviews this week, prompting us to suggest he get help. Maybe he could take tips from the Internet-famous Julia Allison, who crashed his developers' conference?

Allison's sort-of ex, Digg cofounder Kevin Rose, said he was buying Google. Surely not for Knol, Google's weak attempt at taking on Wikipedia — at launch, its search engine didn't even work. Jackson, come back and help us make sense of this crazy business! (Photo by Jason Calacanis)

A week in which we feel in love

Jackson West — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:00:00 EDT

Yes, ladies, there are apparently 110 eligible bachelor billionaires out there — not including Peter Thiel. Sergey Brin's taken, and too bad, because he finds the most thoughtful ways to funnel Google's money into his wife's company. Mission hipsters might not love Google, but within the Googleplex there's still plenty of hanky-panky. Maybe starving artists getting priced out of their apartments could get jobs at Yahoo, where Jerry loves you so much! (Photo by Andrew Mager)

A week in which we didn't buy any iPhones

Jackson West — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:00:00 EDT

The Sun Valley summit gave the ultrarich the only reason they'll ever have to go to Idaho. Digg CEO Jay Adelson and Google cofounder Larry Page looked like they were having fun. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang called Kara Swisher but he looks like he should have called his therapist after Rupert Murdoch says that he's not buying and neither is Microsoft. Meanwhile, YouTube hand-bans anyone who wants to go topless on the site, while Playboy plays up a bunch of bloggers who couldn't care less — why can't you all stop ruining the Internet! (Photo by Liam K)