Tech investors said Viddy, an Instagram clone with video, was worth $370 million. The tech press parroted the "Instagram for video" line until their lips chapped, assuming it was true—since when is app hype wrong? Turns out it was! The startup just sold itself for an itty bitty percentage of that figure, because no one used it.
Popular culture may have turned its gaze westward, toward the mirage of wunderkind coders, open floor plans studded with perks, and suddenly ubiquitous apps that make their makers insta-millionaires. But the competition to get Silicon Valley right has been flaccid. I was burned by Bravo, bored by Bloomberg, and avoided The Internship like a sticker pack. However Betas, Amazon's original series about social awkward 20-somethings building a social app called "brb," gets some details surprisingly right.
The first ever union vote
There's now a layer of corporate muscle standing between window-smashers
There's nothing worse than getting married
Never, ever forget: the Silicon Valley insider crowd is exempt from the rules and norms of the rest of the citizenry. TechCrunch excitedly reports on a new app called "Fixed," which will help San Franciscans automatically kill parking tickets, whether or not they deserve it.
The denial phase is over. In his speech about NSA spying tactics, President Obama just said: "We will also enable communications providers to make public more information than ever before about the orders they have received to provide data to the government."
I understand why Town & Country shoehorned three techies into their "Sexiest Bachelors 2014" list. If coders are the new bankers, and bankers were the new imperial vassal lords (or something), it fits. To a regressive glossy, powerful parvenues are the best bachelors—but try not picking the creepiest in Startupland.
The company has no clear direction, it employs Dave Pogue, a marketing exec is in charge of the media division, Yahoo! Mail is a wreck, and morale is low—but at least the urinal cakes show team spirit.
As the saying goes, If you're not paying for the product, you are the product. For social networks and their data brokers
Why are the vaguely-techie stories that show up on TMZ never as juicy as you hoped? The Hollywood blog reports that Joe Jonas—you know, the one with the good hair who got corrupted by Miley Cyrus—took "random passengers" to Pinkberry this week in his new role as an UberX driver.
Investors who aren't announcing another $1.5 billion fund still have to get attention somehow or they'll lose deal flow to the latest venture celebrity. Gil Dibner, a VC at DFJ Espirit, thought maybe a "VC Code of Conduct" might do the trick. But the 17 point promise inadvertently outlines all the ways investors will give you a raw deal.
Artists, Bay Area residents, and Valleywag readers Colleen Flaherty and Matteo Bittanti shared their latest joint work with us—a series titled "The Streetviews of San Francisco." Or, more plainly, The Bus Wars. It's urban
Unless you have a lot of money, it's often impossible to find a suitable spot for your business in New York, with office lease prices through the roof—and if you're a cash-strapped startup, well, don't bother getting out of bed. Shared offices are increasingly the norm, and it's a good business to be in.
In the warm afterglow of a $3.2 billion acquisition, a sated executive can find himself muttering the professional version of pillow talk. That's what Nest CEO Tony Fadell sounded like on stage this morning at the DLD conference in Munich.
This month, it has dawned on some people that it's possible to be rude on the Internet. Don't care for tenderly served personal revelations on Twitter1? Ticked off by an eager attempt to amuse you with a timely joke? Unfollow with impunity, these monsters advise, citing a sense of euphoria or "joy" after hitting the mute button on a human being (or its parodic equivalent).
Google's private
Last July describing the cultural impact of Black Twitter, Buzzfeed's Shani O. Hilton wrote, "It's diffuse, powerful, and all around you." That's the kind of active, influential user base that startups dream of. But we've barely heard a peep about it from Twitter. Now that it needs ad revenue, that's changing.
