Company That Was Totally Taking Over New Media Now For Sale At $300k

The company that was supposed to replace YouTube is now for sale for $300-500k and the assumption of $1 million in debt. Revver promised big bucks to video creators who used the video sharing service. That money was supposed to come from lucrative video ads; that money apparently never came. The story of Revver's mindblowing incompetence (with exclusive cocaine anecdote) follows. More »

Valleywag's 25 predictions for 2008

Valleywag is of course known for its dead-on accuracy, so our predictions for 2008 need no introduction. Inside, my 25 predictions (made without inside information) cover the futures of Facebook, Google, Digg, YouTube, Twitter, the Wall Street Journal, Apple, Yahoo, Gawker Media, AOL, Dell, LOLcats, the president, and more. More »

Ze Frank's social networking ditty

Add another song to the geek karaoke repertoire. Ze Frank, best known for his year-long videoblog The Show, has released a cute little tune about romance in the age of social networks. "Let's start a social network built just for two," it starts off, and, from there, references networking cliches from hacker-speak to customizable profile pages. Fair warning, though: The chorus, with the repeating phrase "online all the time," has the potential to get locked in your brain all afternoon. Click to play after the jump. More »

Gimme Some Candy

Since I've just criticized other bloggers for shilling, it's the perfect time to shill for something that I profit from.* Erik Gavriluk, who created the "gimme some candy" patronage system for videoblogger Ze Frank, has deployed the system for six other sites, including the popular Ask a Ninja show and musician Jonathan Coulton. More »

"We ran out of Vloggies"

Update: This story's highly disputed. See below. I've found out that PodTech, the Internet's worst video network, screwed over videoblogging hero Ze Frank. In the middle of defending one of his company's screw-ups, PodTech employee Robert Scoble started complaining about how his company "lost a TON of money on Vloggies," referring to the award show PodTech organized last year to recognize good videobloggers (and drum up some attention for PodTech). The show was one of the few good things PodTech ever pulled off — but according to this story, they didn't actually give a crap about one of the favorite vloggers. More »

The new conference elite

The variety of stars at tech conferences used to be limited to bloggers, startup innovators, designers and programmers identifiable only after a glimpse at a name badge. But a new class of celeb is rising with more recognizable star power: videobloggers, often good-looking and engaging, practiced at being entertaining, and a prime target for conference-long entourages. Other techies love hooking up with a less nerdy brand of internet celeb. At this weekend's South by Southwest conference, star vloggers included Casey and Rudy from sci-fi show Galacticast and ABC News vlogger Amanda Congdon. The biggest star by far, though, was Ze Frank, host of the one-man "The Show," who cruised a few parties, hosted the annual Web Awards, and performed a Powerpoint stand-up routine at a Buzzfeed party. Prediction: "Fun" conferences (full of the geeks who do the actual work of Web 2.0) like SXSW will have more vlogger presence than "business" conferences like the upcoming suit-heavy Video on the Net. (photo by Scott Beale)

Vlog Hot: Wildcard Boys Heat 1

We're turning the corner into the homestretch, but how to classify most of videobloggers anyway? Call them wildcards from here on out, as most of them are all over the place, subject-wise. This first heat sports the likes of Peter Bragiel, James Comans, Cyrlille de Lasteyrie, some guy called Ze Frank, Kary Rogers, and Josh Shipp. Click and vote. More »

The 12 Funniest People On The Internet

NICK DOUGLAS — Some of them you recognize, some of them you don't. Here are the twelve funniest people on the Internet today, including Ze Frank, Brad Neely, Worker #3116, and that crazy lady at Violent Acres. More »

Vloggies coverage by Weird America and the ducky

The Weird America video blog already has a polished video recap of Saturday night's Vloggies (an award show that Valleywag covered here). More »

The Vloggies: Kung-fu dubbing, Iraqi interviews, and a duck

By Megan McCarthy More »