Gawker: valleywag, scott heiferman

Martha Stewart's Twitter Inc. Sex Change

Ryan Tate — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:50:40 EDT

Martha Stewart decided the co-founder of Twitter was a woman, Ralph Macchio decided his fans are probably insane and Cody Brown decided to just start publicly eating four pounds of ice cream. The Twitterati weren't so neighborly with their neighbors.

Domestic diva Martha Stewart thought she was sitting with Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, when in reality she was sitting with Evan Williams and... Evans' wife? How does that mix-up happen? When the intern who writes Martha's Twitter stream is trying to get herself fired, that's how.

MeetUp CEO Scott Heiferman raised one of the great questions of our age.

Actor Ralph Macchio just discovered the YouTube version of himself. He's not sure what to make of him.

NYU Local founder Cody Brown grossed out the entire park.

CNET's Caroline McCarthy helped some other reporters nail down New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's not-so-exact height.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Is Web 2.0 Safe in a War Zone?

Owen Thomas — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:47:19 EDT

The gang of webheads sent by the State Department to Iraq is doing what webheads do: blogging, Twittering, and posting photos in real time. This must be giving their government minders fits.

Jack Dorsey, the nominal (read: unemployed) chairman of Twitter, posted about meeting with Iraqi president Jalal Talabani in his palace — which would give anyone opposed to changing the world 140 characters at a time a good bead on his location. Dorsey posted a photograph of Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman, who in turn lensed Wired scribe Steven Levy in protective gear. Meanwhile, Howcast CEO Jason Liebman boosted international relations by misspelling Talabani's name.

Perhaps to stay in the good graces of their State Department protectors, they've also started to assiduously suck up to their official hosts. Anyone who wants to monitor their Twitter transmissions can do so by using their official "iraqtech" tag. Way to make it convenient for the bad guys to keep tabs on you, Web 2.0 dudes!

Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman:

Wired writer Steven Levy:

(Photos by rbc, jack, and heif )

France's Hi-Media buys Fotolog for $90 million

Owen Thomas — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 12:28:57 EDT

Our tipster was right that Fotolog, the New York-based photo-sharing site had been sold — but wrong, alas, about the buyer, and the price. We'd heard of a Latin American buyer paying north of $100 million. Instead, it's Hi-Media, a French Internet concern, paying $90 million in cash and stock — a rich price for a company with 10 million users but only $2.3 million in revenues projected for this year. Hi-media is publicly traded on the Euronext stock exchange, so its shares are as good as cash. But Fotolog backers 3i and BV Capital say they plan to hang onto their shares and "participate in the development" of the combined company. So now the most interesting question is, who cashed out? We wouldn't be shocked if CEO John Borthwick, above, and founder Scott Heiferman were among those receiving an immediate cash payout. Borthwick has a host of other startup ventures, and Heiferman is the CEO of Meetup.

Fotolog sold for $100 million-plus?

Owen Thomas — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:57:44 EDT

A source close to the company tells Valleywag that Fotolog, the social network and photo-sharing site, has been sold to a large Latin American company for an amount over $100 million. Fotolog CEO John Borthwick, who's on his way to Italy for a family vacation, hasn't returned a request for comment. Update: "As if," emails Fotolog cofounder Scott Heiferman. Still, the rumored sale, if true, makes eminent sense for Fotolog — and for Borthwick. Fotolog, though based in New York City, never took off in its home market. But overseas, especially in Latin America, it's huge. The site, which asks users to post a single photo every day, now counts more than 10 million members. While clearly successful, Fotolog is just one of many ventures for Borthwick, a former executive at AOL and Time Warner — and a sale would free him up to pursue those.

Borthwick also runs Betaworks, a technology-company incubator, where his startups include Daylife, Tumblr, Outside.in, and Iminlikewithyou.com. Tumblr, especially, seems to be gaining traction as a new blogging platform, and would make for a logical project to focus on.

But first, of course, he has to wrap up Fotolog's affairs. The deal has been signed, we hear, but not yet announced, and Valleywag hasn't yet learned the name of the acquirer. Our tipster says it's not, surprisingly, Grupo Clarin, an Argentinean media company with which Fotolog has a partnership. The sale price is rich, at four or five times the $20 million to $25 million sum Yahoo is believed to have paid for Flickr a couple of years ago.

Fotolog, however, is more social network than photo-storage site. Unlike Flickr, or the News Corp.-owned Photobucket, whose photos mostly appear elsewhere — mostly on sister site MySpace — Fotolog users view photos on the site itself, and then discuss them and chat with friends they meet on the site. With most of its users in Europe and Latin America, Fotolog's probably better off owned by someone close to its user base.

The sale, assuming all goes as our source has heard, will be a handsome payoff for venture capital backers 3i and BV Capital, as well as Fotolog's angel investors, who put a total of $12 million into the company.