Gawker: valleywag, technology review

The Twitterati Give Their Divorce Lawyer a Porn Name

Owen Thomas — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:33:27 EDT

The problem with Twitterati isn't so much oversharing as undercaring. Laurel Touby's apartment woes, Lockhart Steele's porn name, and Penelope Trunk's divorce bill are as good as the media elite's tweets get!

Boa-bedecked media horror Laurel Touby was stymied in her real-estate quest by husband Jon Fine's raging metrosexuality.

Bicoastal tech execuwrangler Brooke Hammerling outed Gawker alumnus Lockhart Steele as a non-porn star.

TechPresident blog blowhard Micah Sifry waxed Foucauldian.

Brazen divorcist Penelope Trunk contemplated barter.

Technology Review Twitterer-in-chief Jason Pontin thought about the poor, but only for 140 characters.

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

The Twitterati Are Humbled by a Bollywood Martini

Owen Thomas — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:20:49 EDT

A proud lot, journalists — and yet so often they drown their sorrows in PB&J martinis. Or the sweet liqueur of Twitter. Jason Pontin, Ana Marie Cox, Susan Orlean and others shared their secret shames:

SF Appeal editrix Eve Batey triumphed over musical shame.

Fox Chicago anchor Nancy Loo conducted consumer food-safety research.

Vain, pompous, self-aggrandizing Technology Review editor Jason Pontin couldn't choose just one adjective.

New Yorker writer Susan Orlean had an insight about the likes of Pontin.

By mid-afternoon, Air America radio hostess Ana Marie Cox had once again turned her thoughts to booze.

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

The Twitterati Toss Their BlackBerry at Maureen Dowd

Owen Thomas — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:48:43 EDT

Dispatches from the land of Twitteronia: Penelope Trunk and Brooke Hammerling wrestled with their relationships, while Jason Pontin and Chris Lehmann wrestled with the facts. These are the fights Twitter always wins:

Bicoastal tech PR maven Brooke Hammerling broke up with her BlackBerry.

Technology Review Twitterer-in-chief Jason Pontin let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Blogger Penelope Trunk abbreviated her relationship.

Former Condé Nast dealmaker Kourosh Karimkhany had an encounter with celebrity San Francisco crazy dude Frank Chu.

Chris Lehmann, better known as Mr. Ana Marie Cox, confused Elizabeth Edwards with Maureen Dowd.

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

The Twitterati Will Have Painkillers, Two CDs, and a Martini

Owen Thomas — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:40:00 EDT

A Today anchorlady thinks her cohost is higher than a kite, a New Yorker aims to get drunk, Alex Balk perks up his ears, and everyone else pretends to work. The latest from Twitteronia:

Ann Curry of the Today Show accused Matt Lauer of being on drugs.

New Yorker writer Susan Orlean had a drink.

Technology Review fauxmosexual-in-chief Jason Pontin kept up the appearance of working.

Gawker alumnus Alex Balk learned something new.

AllThingsD blogger Peter Kafka tried to keep the music industry afloat.

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

The Twitterati, Now Lazier Than Ever!

Owen Thomas — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:40:00 EDT

Why hit the phones when you can just do your work on Twitter? Jason Pontin, Caroline Waxler, and a Washington Post reporter show us how to tweetsource your way to more free time:

Brazen Careerist blogger Penelope Trunk thought about sex and clean boxes.

Fortune contributor Caroline Waxler, formerly an editor at Henry Blodget's Business Insider, contemplated downward mobility.

Wired's Danny Dumas saved a Washington Post reporter the trouble of finding an actual source.

Freelance editor Todd Lappin crowdsourced his geek inquiries.

Technology Review editor Jason Pontin tried to fill up a lonely letters page.

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

A Day When None Rose Above

Owen Thomas — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:23:22 EST

What's going on with our favorite Twitterati? Read what floats Jason Pontin's boat, discover the key to Shira Lazar's heart, and learn Aaron Task's wooing secrets.

Faux-British Technology Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin contemplated his surroundings.

Yahoo Tech Ticker anchor Aaron Task consulted with the ladies.

NBC-employed Los Angeles fameball Shira Lazar fondled her Shift key.

Former Spy editor Kurt Andersen was haunted by his past.

Online-video talent agent George Ruiz was excited about his afternoon meetings today.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please.

What else must Jason Pontin do to prove he's not gay?

Owen Thomas — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Congratulations to Technology Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin. His wife, Boston Globe editor Anne Nelson, has validated his long-rumored but heretofore unproven heterosexuality through the birth of a son, Alonzo Pontin. Heir, heir! Jason, Valleywag will keep a summer internship slot open for Alonzo in 2027, provided he doesn't inherit his dad's obnoxiously fake British accent.

Jason Pontin coming out as straight next month

Owen Thomas — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:40:00 EDT

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — Technology Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin is bursting with pride. No, not the Clay Aiken sort: He is married — to a woman, one must specify, since this is Massachusetts — and the couple is expecting a child in mid-October. Oh, and his magazine has won some large number of awards from an industry trade publication, placing behind CRN for best online community. But how to explain his choice of wardrobe at the EmTech conference he is hosting? His hosiery recalls Nathan Lane's in The Birdcage. On the surface, Pontin's straightness remains as plausible as the former West Oakland resident's British accent. Update: Pontin adds, "Please mention my stylishly skinny Nudie jeans from Sweden." You're not helping, Jason.

Technology Review editor addicted to Twitter, gossip

Owen Thomas — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 09:00:00 EDT

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — I'm here in the hub of the universe for EmTech, a conference thrown by Technology Review, MIT's magazine of self-importance. Jason Pontin, who is the magazine's editor-in-chief, publisher, and whatever title he's added last week, has just introduced Vinod Khosla, one of the venture-capital industry's brightest names. But is Pontin gazing raptly at Khosla, taking in his every word of wisdom? No, he is not. I can see his laptop screen from six rows away. He is using Twitter, a recent topic of obsession for him. This grand chronicler of innovation is whiling away the duration of Khosla's presentation 140 characters at a time. Oh, wait! I take that back. Now he's reading Valleywag.

Oversharing is over — save it for your book deal

Melissa Gira Grant — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Former blog queen Emily Gould suggests the rest of us delete, unfollow, cancel, and block ourselves from the Web. This is notable chiefly because Gould's last big appearance in print was an excessively detailed confessional of her online misadventures for the New York Times Magazine. The social media age is complicated, she complains in a writeup of Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody for MIT's Tech Review. Someone stop us before we blog again!

Gould, a former Gawker editor who institutionalized oversharing as an element of blog style, now plays the penitent. As a writer, she revealed details of her love life in the course of contributing to a gossip site, one that eventually used her exit as more gossip for the mill. Today, though, Gould can't resist the temptation to revisit her past:

Like an expatriate who reads every new novel that's set in her homeland, I read books about the Internet to remember the time I spent working and living there.

Gould argues that dependency on services like Twitter and Facebook to define ourselves gives us "inauthentic" relationships — representations of human connection, not the connection itself. But I stopped reading when she invoked theorist Walter Benjamin's 1936 essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility." Benjamin's worries are still legitimate — his Teutonically hard-to-follow essay prophesized the TV-driven wars of the last two decades. But why is Emily Gould invoking Marxist theory to warn us of the dangers of Twitter and Tumblr? Because, like Shirky, she has a book she wants you to buy.

Flickr's Cal Henderson dumped by Technology Review covergirl Leah Culver

Owen Thomas — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:40:00 EDT

We've been remiss in informing you of this: Cal Henderson, the eminently scalable Flickr engineer, and Leah Culver, the shrill-voiced cofounder of Pownce, San Francisco's favorite way to share MP3 files while evading copyright cops, broke up some time ago. (We hear it wasn't exactly his idea.) But don't feel sorry for Henderson, or Culver. She has no shortage of suitors — including, it seems, Technology Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin, who was taken enough with Culver to put her on his magazine's latest cover. Pontin's married, but a man can dream, can't he? Sorry, Jason: We now hear Culver's hooked up with a Googler. (Photo of Henderson by magerleagues)

Jason Pontin from the block

Owen Thomas — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:00:33 EDT

Don't be fooled by the titles that he's got (CEO, editor-in-chief, publisher, grand vizier, poo-bah). Jason Pontin from Technology Review reflects his Oakland-via-Oxford roots, styling an ironic hoodie under his suit jacket at the Valleywag/io9/Lifehacker party in Austin.

Jason Pontin's Facebook fallacy

Owen Thomas — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:24:35 EDT

It was all in good fun, I thought, to tease my former boss Jason Pontin, now editor of MIT's Technology Review, about using Facebook, of all things, to hunt for interesting startup ideas. But the well-meant mockery soon uncovered a deeper issue: My friend misunderstands how one is meant to use Facebook. Pontin, ever the technoliteralist, takes Facebook at its word, thinking of it as a tool to replicate real-world relationships. He misses the real use that self-promoters like Jason Calacanis and Robert Scoble have discovered: Spamming the less-important people who have volunteered to be your "friends" — people who are really just fans, to whom you have no meaningful relationship.

Pontin writes, in a posting on Facebook:

What have I done?

Last week, when I asked my Facebook friends which startups I should write about, marketing and public relations professionals I donot know began befriending me and inundating me with pitches. I value Facebook as a private network, one where I can talk to my real friends, colleagues, and peers. Therefore, if you work in PR or marketing, and I don't have a prior relationship with you, I shan't be accepting your friendings and I shan't be reading your messages. I don't mean to be rude—but there it is.

Ah, but Jason, refusing Facebook friend invitations is rude, according to Scoble, a Facebook connoisseur. It's called "faceslamming," Scoble claims, and it's simply not done. Why, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates "faceslammed" Scoble, and Scoble's still steaming about it!

The trick to using Facebook as a tool for self-promotion is to treat it as strictly one-way. Accept all friend invitations, and then relentlessly spam your fans with examples of your latest work, to drum up traffic. Ignore any messages you receive; you can always plead "Facebook bankruptcy," as Calacanis did.

Even Pontin is beginning to understand that Facebook is not, in the end, about real relationships. Immediately after posting his diatribe against opportunistic faux frienders on Facebook, he turned around and added a Facebook spokesperson as a "friend." Why? Not because Pontin and the PR rep are actual friends in real life. His rationale? She "might conceivably be useful to me and [Technology Review]," he explains. The other PR reps who tried to friend Pontin? Not useful, apparently.

Useful versus not useful, of course, has the benefit of being a clearer distinction than the squishy category of "friend." Facebook, through the tireless efforts of Scoble and Calacanis, is transforming from a social network to a utilitarian broadcast network. Its users, increasingly, are divided into those looking for an audience, and those willing to provide same — as well as the usual Silicon Valley scrum of favor-trading and wheeling and dealing. Just ask yourself: What have your "friends" done for you lately?

Jason Pontin admits he has no ideas

Owen Thomas — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 15:52:13 EDT

We thought it amusing, if a bit sad, when Technology Review editor-in-chief started asking for startups to pitch him for his New York Times column on Facebook. But for him to continue the apparently unanswered plea, more than a week later? Maudlin veering on pathetic. Please, someone with an interesting startup to profile — do yourself a favor, stop flinging yourself on the rocky shoals of Valleywag, and try Pontin instead. We hear he's easy.