Gawker: valleywag, the 250

Valley's cutest couple ever creates cutest video ever

Owen Thomas — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:00:00 EDT

Holy frack. Is there any couple more adorable than Facebook platform director Dave Morin and his lady love, evangelicious Google Maps marketer Brittany Bohnet? Their employers may be rivals for developers' affections, but this lip-sync video of "All My Life," created on a road-trip through Cyprus, has no competition for the remaining drips of sentiment in my sappy little heart. Will you two crazy kids quit your dead-end jobs and start a company devoted to, I don't know, being the winsomest thing in the world? I'd invest in preferred shares of teary-cheeked admiration, at a valuation of 15 billion awwwws.

The hardest working suit vest in the blog business

Alaska Miller — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:00:00 EDT

Mashable founder Pete Cashmore will say goodbye to his American friends tonight in San Francisco. The faux-blogging CEO caps off his six-month visa stay with a party, booze, food, and — as always — startup pitches. The Scottish whirlwind came to the U.S. and stayed long enough to snag a documentary, as well as gals left, right, and sometimes both sides. What's the secret? Perhaps it's his dapper outfit. We chronicle Pete's magical suit vest:

February 23, 2008:
FlashMash Meet NYC

Februrary 25, 2008:

Valleywag

March 10, 2008:
SXSW '08

March 11, 2008:

Valleywag

March 12, 2008:
Rana Sobhany's Rock Band Party

March 13, 2008:

(Photo by Brian Solis/Bub.blicio.us)

March 18, 2008:
Tumblr/Rock Band party

March 31, 2008:
Mashable/Causecast drinkup

April 5, 2008:

Valleywag

April 11, 2008:
PopCrunch 2008

April 22, 2008:
Web 2.0 Expo/Digg party

June 7, 2008:

(Photo by Brian Solis/Bub.blicio.us)

June 18, 2008:

(Photo by Brian Solis/bub.blicio.us)

July 15, 2008:

Valleywag

July 18, 2008:
LA Mashable Tour

July 20, 2008;

SummerMash LA

August 21, 2008:
Mashable Monthly

September 20, 2008:
Blog World Expo

September 30, 2008:

(Photo by Mark Heithoff/DETAILS)
October Details magazine profile.

(Top photo by Caroline McCarthy)

Demi Moore and Robert Scoble's moment of mutual unrecognition

Jackson West — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:40:00 EDT

Just how isolated are tech pundits like Robert Scoble from the real world? In a telling moment at a "VIP" party for TechCrunch50, Michael Arrington's startup conference taking place this week in San Francisco, an attendee tried to explain Scoble's notoriety to fading film star Demi Moore. Moore was on hand to promote her hubby Ashton Kutcher's new Web show Blah Girls. The actress, like most of America, had never heard of the ruddy, flaxen-haired Fast Company videoblogger. More surprising was Scoble's confession that he hadn't recognized Moore, either. Which makes me think of a new motto for the 250, Valleywag's term for the Valley's self-appointed, self-obsessed inside crowd: "You don't know us, and we don't know you." (Photos by AP/Evan Agostini and Shannon Clark)

When the 250 only date the 250

Owen Thomas — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:00:00 EDT

When we popularized "the 250" as a nickname for San Francisco's Internet cool-kids crowd, we didn't realize how literal the incest was. Take the flirtation between Flickr's engineering chief, Cal Henderson, and Ariel Waldman, the community manager of Pownce, an online file-sharing service. Pownce was cofounded by Leah Culver, Henderson's ex-girlfriend, who has also dated around the scene. Henderson and Waldman traveled to Hawaii together, and have made jokes — on Twitter and Flickr, of course — about Henderson wishing Waldman shared his last name and calling her his "fake wife." It's all so darling, veering on disturbing.

Social networks — the kind Henderson and Waldman work on when they're not using them to flirt — are supposed to expand our worlds. Yet these websites' real effect is to shrink them. Who'd want to start anything with anyone who's not already registered on all the same websites you use? The training time to explain the twee etiquette of Web 2.0 is a barrier to entry more fearsome than any Google or Microsoft might dream up. It can only lead to San Francisco's insider scene becoming literally inbred.

(Photo by bees))

All the news that's fit to print, unless the website's down

Owen Thomas — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:40:00 EDT

The website of the New York Times is unresponsive beyond an archaic "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" error. We didn't even have to check the site — we could have gathered as much from the frantic IMs being sent by the same Internet poseurs who like to blog about how the mainstream media is irrelevant to their lives.

The 250 shows supercharged viral growth, more than tripling to 806 in four months

Owen Thomas — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:20:00 EDT

Back in March, very special correspondent Paul Boutin revealed that the Olds were derisively referring to the insular San Francisco clique of Web hipsters — the sort of people who Twitter about how they wish FriendFeed had a better Plurk API — as "the 250." After learning that 806 people tuned in to watch Kevin Rose shave his head, live on the Internet, we are now revising that figure upwards by a factor of 3.224. With Rose's market-expanding efforts, we now have three times as many people to mock. Thanks, Kevin!

Robert Scoble, other Valley bon vivants subject of latest ego-stroking linkbait

Jackson West — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Vancouver-based NowPublic is ostensibly all about citizen journalism. But since Guy Kawasaki sold Truemors to it and signed up as an advisor, it's becoming better known for publishing flattering lists of "influencers," supposedly ranking them according to various social media metrics. The first "Most Public" list focused on New York, but a new list for the Valley and San Francisco is "coming soon." And by virtue of being included in the latest edition, we received an early copy as a press release. Who comes out on top? Ubiquitous attention slut Robert Scoble, naturally. Full list after the jump.

Robert Scoble

Michael Arrington

Jack Dorsey

Biz Stone

Matt Cutts

Pete Cashmore

Dave Winer

Guy Kawasaki

Loïc Le Meur

Kevin Rose

Merlin Mann

Stowe Boyd

Jeff Atwood

Jeremiah Owyang

Veronica Belmont

Kara Swisher

Scott Beale

Marc Andreessen

Ryan Block

David Sifry

Emily Chang

Om Malik

Timothy Ferriss

Nick Douglas

John Battelle

David Cohn

Louis Gray

Tom Foremski

Tim O'Reilly

Ariel Waldman

Matt Mullenweg

Dean Takahashi

Philip Kaplan

JD Lasica

Sarah Lacy

Brian Solis

Charlene Li

Rafe Needleman

Dan Farber

Howard Rheingold

David McClure

Margaret Mason

Jason Goldman

Leah Culver

Chris Shipley

Jackson West

Liz Gannes

Owen Thomas

Adeo Ressi

Max Levchin

(Photo from Michael Arrington)

Citizen journalists rush to fill Internet's shortage of A-lists

Paul Boutin — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:00:00 EDT

I blame Guy Kawasaki. Ten days after the relentless listmaker joined the advisory board of Vancouver-based citizen journalism hub NowPublic, the site published a link-baiting "The 50 most influential people in New York." We've had this piece in our inboxes since Friday morning, but we couldn't figure out how to get anyone in the Valley to care about a list topped by Noah Brier and Jeff Jarvis. More interesting is me-blogger Anil Dash's take on the genre: "First and foremost, organizations create these lists to promote their own authority." Exactly. We've been pitched to do a Valleywag 100 or Valleywag 40 or whatever by consultants who crank out marketing events for a living. But they balk when we ask for a deck of playing cards emblazoned with the faces of 52 People We Want Gone.

FriendFeed spawns yet another A-list no one reads

Paul Boutin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:40:00 EDT

FriendFeed, a largely unused aggregation service for other Web 2.0 services most people don't use, has become the new hotspot for tech's roving band of self-styled A-listers. There's good reason: FriendFeed's user base is catching up fast on Twitter. But yesterday, blogger Yuval Atzmon posted an informal FriendFeed 250 that's already replaced the Twitter Top 100 as the place to be for self-promoters (and for people who like to argue methodologies.) The good news is there's still room for you. A mere 280 followers will put you on the list. But hurry. By August, FriendFeed will look exactly like every other Web 2.0 list ever made. One in three posts will be about a tech conference, and one in five will explain why because of FriendFeed, John Markoff at the New York Times is really scared for his job.

Plurk, yet another microblogging platform, hailed by The 250

Jackson West — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:20:00 EDT

Not happy with updating your friends publicly via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pownce and Jaiku (and feeding all those updates into FriendFeed)? Then, um, try Plurk, a startup which declares, "We've taken the time, the complexity, and the deep introspection required out of blogging." Also, too, the irony. [The Inquisitr]

Geeks on Twitter act like rabbis debating arcane points of the Talmud

Jackson West — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:00:00 EDT

Former Yahoo Personals exec Susan Mernit recently returned from a conference in Tel Aviv, Israel. The trip inspired an analogy: She compares the insular community of hyperconnected techies to the shtetls formed by Jews of the European diaspora to protect their community from the ignorance and prejudice of illiterate gentiles. Except they speak Nerdic instead of Yiddish.

"I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again"

Jordan Golson — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:20:00 EDT

Jason Calacanis makes a list of ways to relieve stress with friends. Our favorite? "g) next time you go to a conference fly there with someone. Mike Arrington, Om Malik and I were all on the same flight to Le Web this past year. It's just great fun to travel together, share movies, and read books." Jason, you're making a mess with all those names you're dropping.

Robert Scoble plays dirty uncle in Amsterdam

Jackson West — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:40:00 EDT

A tipster writes in to tell us he was a little skeeved out by Fast Company TV videoblogger Robert Scoble. The offense? Manhandling the ladies at the NextWeb conference in Amsterdam two weeks ago.

Recently in Amsterdam Scoble brought great embarrassment to the conference organization by not keeping his hands to himself. Every woman that had her picture taken with him was squeezed against him with his hands going everywhere.

All the photos on Flickr have judiciously been set to private, but our tipster managed to smuggle some of their own. Scoble nauseating even the abnormally permissive Dutch by cuddling teenaged startup hopeful Jessica Mah after the jump.

What got people really upset was that he couldn't keep his hands of 17 year old Jessica Mah during the conference after party. He was all over her in the VIP room. The organization was paranoid about pictures being taken, which is why you hardly will find any. In this picture she is laying on his lap.

Were this any other married father of two, we would raise our eyebrows. Scoble's eldest son is, after all, a more appropriate date for Jessica Mah, the 17-year-old startup hopeful snuggled in his lap.

But unlike our tipster, we're inclined to give Scoble a pass. He a Silicon Valley archetype: the high school nerd unhinged by newfound digital fame. In his mind, he's still 17 himself. Having never had the experience of popularity in high school, he's recreating it now. And by that logic, there's nothing wrong with him snuggling with a girl who, if not so precocious, would be in high school herself.

How to become an Internet rock star, the Gary Vaynerchuk way

Jackson West — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:20:00 EDT

Wine Library TV's Gary Vaynerchuck has no boobs, but he's been on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, he's got a book deal, and went from successful small businessman to having The 250 drink his entrepreneurial Kool-Aid. How did he do it? Free booze. Party like an Internet Rockstar at Medjool with Gary Vee and see how it's done. (Photo by Brian Solis)

Angry mom-blogger runs over haters

Paul Boutin — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:40:00 EDT

Lots of businesses get hate mail, but few owners react the way Dooce's Heather Armstrong does. She prints out nasty emails, puts them in her driveway and drives over them with her car. "That's the attitude I have," she says, "and it's made my life a thousand percent better."

I stopped reading at "a thousand percent." (Photo by Heather B. Armstrong)

Revision3 beats Digg at dodgeball

Jackson West — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:20:00 EDT

In a best-of-nine match held on UCSF Mission Bay's campus, Revision3 beat Digg 5-4 to kick off San Francisco's dodgeball season. The online video network took home nerd bragging rights — and all-star free agent Kevin Rose, pictured here making a diving catch.

Revision3 Coach David Prager stated in a press conference after the game, "Digg came to play dirty, but little did they realize that we can play dirtier." In a post game interview, Digg's Kevin Rose said, "I founded both companies ... I'm going to join the Revision3 team now."

Revision3 will now have to face off against a number of unknowns in the six-team league, but coach Prager assured me that he's open to challenges from other local startups. Video of the dramatic final game after the jump.

Lodwick's latest flame pitches Muxtape for him

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:40:00 EDT

Meet Mareen Fischinger, a photographer from Düsseldorf, Germany, according to her Tumblr blog. "I don't know anything about her," a source tells us, "Just that Jakob [Lodwick] is [redacted] her." We have a little more to add to the scoop. Besides her obvious eye for photography, Fischinger shares her boyfriend's talent for pitching Muxtape without disclosing his relationship to the company.

The photo Pete Cashmore would pay to delete from the Internet

Melissa Gira Grant — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Saturday's Twitterati Drinkup, a self-mocking gathering of the 250, almost saw the ruin of blogger Pete Cashmore, if you believe Pete Cashmore. In an effort to keep the following image out of the hands of "the media," Mr. Mashable offered compensation to photographer Andrew Mager in the form of blogging about him, and when that didn't work, actual money. As he explained to the lady whose tit he's tilting at, Nikol Hasler of the video podcast Midwest Teen Sex Show, "This is the sort of thing Gawker and Valleywag would have a field day with." Sorry, Pete, but we're not sharing this one with Gawker.

Science proves it — no one trusts bloggers

Paul Boutin — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:00:00 EDT

Steve Rubel, Edelman PR's Director of Insights, posts an insightful chart from an international survey (PDF) Edelman conducted. It shows that "opinion elites," defined as college-educated people in the top income quartile of their country who report a significant interest in and engagement with the media, business news, and policy affairs — that's you! — mostly trust people like themselves. Who's at the bottom of the trust-o-meter? Bloggers, who fell well behind company CEOs. Regular company employees are given much more credibility. This is why Google's PR people slap engineers' names on those blog posts the marcom specialists type up, and why Nick Denton announces changes at Gawker Media by letting me "leak" them. Trust me, I'm a blogger.

TechCrunch50 vs. Demo — a fight guide

Paul Boutin — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:00:00 EDT

Conference gnomes will need to choose sides. Blog moguls Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington have teamed up to schedule their TechCrunch50 show in September in direct competition to Chris Shipley's Demofall event. I've prepared a cheat sheet to follow the action at a distance.

Demofall runs September 7-9 in San Diego, Sunday through Tuesday.
TechCrunch50 runs September 8-10 in San Francisco, Monday through Wednesday.
Demofall showcases new products. TechCrunch50 requires that the entire company be a new launch.
Both events try to keep their lists of presenters a secret until close to showtime.
Demofall requires that exhibitors not participate in any other shows. Companies chosen to exhibit at both shows will be forced to pick one.
Job-avoiding members of The 250 will surely attend both. But most attendees and many journalists will be forced to choose either Demo or TechCrunch, and to skip the other entirely. Note: This is where the fun starts.
Demofall is a less-prestigious spinoff of the bigger Demo show held in January in Palm Desert, California. It was originally called Demomobile, but there wasn't enough mobile to demo. It's not all-out war until TechCrunch goes head-to-head with the January Demo.
Demo's organizers spell it DEMO, but it's not an acronym, so Owen makes me spell it Demo. I'm not sure why TechCrunch isn't Techcrunch by that rule. But I'm glad Valleywag isn't ValleyWag.
Arrington told VentureBeat that the schedule conflict wasn't intentional. It was, he said, the only time they could get the venue they really wanted. This is the difference between a journalist and a publicist.
Calacanis has been much more blunt about his desire to "take the payola out of Demo" by hosting a similar event that doesn't charge demonstrators a fee. It's currently $18,500 per company to appear at Demo, free at TechCrunch50. PR people I talked to believe $18,500 is a fair price for the exposure Demo gives a new product or company. But many of the shoestring Web 2.0 firms TechCrunch tracks simply don't have it.
UPDATE: New improved quotes.
- Arrington: "Demo needs to die."
- Calacanis: "Chris Shipley, you moved your event to compete with us."
- Shipley: "It baffles me, because ultimately it's not very good for entrepreneurs. It doesn't make sense how this will help them."
If she's so concerned for the entrepreneurs, why not let them do both shows? That seems easier.