• New York-based e-mail startup Daily Candy gets a sweet deal: an investment valuing the company at $130 mil, which lets the company take down its "For Sale" sign and get back to the important business of making urban women feel inadequately shoed. [Gawker, link being fixed]

Well look who's got themselves a new sugar daddy: the pretty ladies at Daily Candy have found themselves a minority investor valuing the company at $130 million. Back in February, Daily Candy's controlling investor Bob Pittman put the trendy email service on the auction block with a minimum bid of $100 million — but the ballsy number was enough to scare off the New York Times Co., News Corp., and Hearst. Instead, the Wall Street Journal reports that the company is no longer for sale, the ladies having decided to whore themselves to just one minority investment, the money from which shall go towards maintaining their well-stocked closets.

Today, rather than tell you pretty ladies how to be even prettier, DailyCandy has a reader survey. Just be careful: answer incorrectly, and you may be blackballed from Intermix — or their mailing list.


Daily Candy New York Reader Survey 2006

Daily Candy editor-at-large Dannielle Romano grabs hold of DC founder Dany Levy. We fear we have pictures of Dannielle displaying similar enthusiasm for us.

The only thing more old-school than a dot-com (okay, except a BBS, grandpa) is an at-dot-com — an e-mail newsletter like DailyCandy. The Manhattan-based shopping guide snagged a feature story in New York Magazine, and every detail seemed eerily familiar.

• Details missed its rate base on eight of 10 issues in 2005. Fun. [Ad Age]
• Martha Stewart launches Blueprint today in a bid to reach younger readers. There should probably be a joke about Alexis here, but we can't think of one. [NYP]
• Daily Candy remains for sale. [NYM]
• Punch Sulzberger has allegedly said that he'll read the Times on the computer when he can take a computer into the bathroom with him. Now, apparently, he can. [NYT]
• Kurt Andersen thinks we're in a tech bubble again. How does he know? Because Michael Wolff wants in. [NYM]
• Simon Dumenco answers the questions you didn't ask, including whether he has a clothing line and what his jingle sounds like. [Ad Age]
• Existentially speaking, who is Brian Williams? [MW]
• NYT M.E. Jill Abramson's grandfather could have invested early in Paramount Pictures but didn't. [NYSun]

Daily Candy was just on the Today Show to promote their new book, Daily Candy A-Z (on sale tomorrow), which features chapters like "L is for Luxury" and "P is for Party." In honor of their literary achievement, they've really pulled out the stops in today's edition of their email newsletter:

From today's Daily Candy email newsletter:

Silicon Alley's feature coverage in this week's NYT Styles section (because it's too fun for the tech section) shows that the Alley is just like the Valley again — with all the requisite bubble signs:

We couldn't help but notice that yesterday's edition of the UrbanDaddy newsletter (think Daily Candy for cocks) is frighteningly similar to today's edition of the Thrillist newsletter (again, Daily Candy for cocks). Both reviewed the Meatpacking District's latest addition, Pre:Post, which caters to patrons with drinks and meals both before and after their club crawls. A brief comparison of the two reviews' bullet points:

You've spent hours on the therapist's couch trying to move on, but you just can't forget that horrible day in second grade. It was lunchtime, and everyone reached into their backpacks to get out their food, and everyone — everyone — somehow knew to have that cute new Corey Haim lunchbox. Except you. You just had a plain brown bag. And you'd never felt so left out in your life.

The pretty, sparkly ladies at Daily Candy are always ahead of the curve, recommending the best in overpriced food and fashion in places you've never heard of. One can only assume that similar sense of trendy adventure led the Daily Candy girls to recommend CAP USA sportswear in today's newsletter, where you can bling-up your Chucks or get some custom-designed Jordans with that adorable Dooney & Burke logo.

For whatever reason, we actually read today's DailyCandy email, in which the virtues of professional organizer Stacey Platt so wonderfully applauded that, upon reading, we were left stupidly wondering how we ever could have lived without paying someone to alphabetize our DVDs for us. So we went to Platt's website, the tastefully Zen Breathing Space, moseyed around, and came across the following testimonial:

Our early morning surfing:

Super-cute email newsletter DailyCandy knows no boundaries in the pursuit of pretty clothes and precious tchotchkes, so few were surprised when those pretty ladies went and got a book deal. We've not seen much on the book-to-be, however, so stumbling upon the publisher's page for Daily Candy A to Z has felt like a slap in the unstylish face.

Yesterday's Thrillist:

Yesterday, we lamented the existence of Thrillist, an email newsletter catering to Golden Tee-playing Murray Hill boys and their love of drinking and humping. In particular, we're frustrated by the lack of a comparable newsletter for ladies and/or Gays (save for the overly-precious Daily Candy), and we suggested that we might start translating Thrillist for our own means. Today's edition, in which Thrillist men can learn about a rip-cord applicator condom — donned with such speed that you'd have to be a fucking girl to lose your erection in the process — is exactly the sort of thing that could be easily and effectively marketed to the opposite sex:

We're reluctant to admit it, but we've been following online newsletter Thrillist more closely than anyone without a closet full of striped button-downs ever should. And yet? We're completely transfixed by its evil, fratty brilliance. It manages, four times every week, to find a different way of promoting the finest in testosteroniffic pursuits: heavy drinking and getting ass. We may not agree with it, but we're certainly impressed. You try finding 208 different ways of telling a dude to make sure he gets his date drunk.

• Christian Slater, forced to give up his New York hobby of ass-groping, heads to West Hollywood, where he supplements his diet of misbehavior by falling off of Paris Hilton's roof. [People]
• Can we not take a tip from our friends across the pond and offer amnesty for those commuters caught reading embarrassing books? [Friday Project]
• Kate Moss grabs the December cover of Vanity Fair, making it all the more meta when you inevitably use your copy for cutting lines. [Jossip]
• Sex and the City's advertising campaign continues to skank all over Manhattan. [Gothamist]
• Justin Timberlake is being blamed for ruining Shrek 3. Funny: We thought Shrek 2 ruined the franchise. Aw, were we mean to the cute wittle cartoons? [Radar]
• Jesse Sheidlower literally cannot stand your incorrect usage of the word "literally." [Slate]
• For those of you poor spinsters so pathetic as to not land real engagement rings, Daily Candy suggests wearing a fake. [DailyCandy]

Daily Candy goes on a purple prose extravaganza in today s e-letter, Leafy Keen, which plugs a company that adorns household objects with the imprints of real leaves.