TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington started playing Alexadex (a website stock-exchange game based on Alexa) in February. He blogged his first day (using an undisclosed referral URL! OMG scandal!), promising to buy stock in web sites just before blogging about them, then profiting (in pretend money) from his own TechCrunch Effect.
Karl Jacob is taking Wallop out for a spinoff The not-so-hot social network just split from Microsoft as its own (VC-funded) company. TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington (who's tried every social site this side of Adult Friend Finder) says he's seen some of Wallop's new offerings, and it's not just another Tagged.com or Yahoo 360.
The TechCrunch effect: getting covered on Michael Arrington's tech blog makes business boom, it gets you into parties, it makes jerk-off Valley men treat your modeling site like a San Jose strip club. The owner of Solomodels.com wrote Valleywag this letter:
Damn, did someone grab a screencap? [See below.] Yesterday, TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington wrote in "The Flickr gunners" that photo sharing site SmugMug wasn't "Web 2.0" like competitors Flickr and BubbleShare. But he snipped that remark from his post after SmugMug's Don MacAskill noticed. The SmugMug CEO schooled Mike in a blog post, listing SmugMug's Web 2.0-ish qualities. Sez Don,
Blogger's Fuel says, "What do bloggers need? Great coffee!" Sure, if by "great coffee" they mean "a Jack and Coke." [BloggersFuel.com]
The normally mild-mannered tech blogger Michael Arrington, benefit-of-the-doubt giver to all startups, lays the TechCrunch smackdown on Jigsaw. The startup pays you to rat out your friends to its contact list — a dollar for every pal you betray to marketers. Privacy violation make HulkCrunch mad! HulkCrunch smash! [Jigsaw is a really bad idea]
Why is MySpace so successful? Social network expert danah boyd credits social-life integration, a massive user base, friendly governance, activities, convenient brokenness, and possible faddishness. (I credit the hot chicks on it.) [Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad?]
AjaxWrite — it's Word online. Microsoft doesn't need one, Google already has one, and Yahoo's just not into that — if a dot-com launches and no one's there to buy it, does it make a flip? [AjaxWrite, the Newest Ajax Office Entrant]
San-Fran-based MyNewPlace just got $8 million in funding. The site will offer apartment listings online. Because no one else is doing that. [MyNewPlace Gets Funding For Spring Launch]
Look, if you want to run a dot-com, pitch your TVRank idea to John Battelle — he wants realtime online TV ratings. And I hear he knows a few VCs. [TVRank: Tell Me What People Are Watching]
Another week of tech podcasts churned through the official Valleywag iPod. The verdict: suffer through a Laporte-less This Week in Tech and you can skip the rest.
Michael Arrington, the hot new wunderblogger fueling Bubble Boom 2.0 on TechCrunch, left a fancy life in law for the infamously poor life that all bloggers supposedly endure. But six months down the road, he's concerned enough about his wealth to lock that baby down with Draper Fisher Jurveston-funded TrustedID.
Rejoice or cry. Dave Winer, inventor of RSS (disregarding the other inventors) and A-lister's A-lister in the Valley blog world, is gonna give up blogging at Scripting.com. "Soon, probably before the end of 2006, I will put this site in mothballs, in archive mode, and go on to other things."
Update: This tipster may have read too much into the story. Arrington says on Digg that Yahoo wasn't his source.
Noting the creeping incestuous corruption that threatens any tech writer (even a fake one), I decided to either stop the crooked dealing, or just tell you all about it for jealousy points.
Since Fox Interactive prez Ross Levinsohn said "We bought someone in this room" — at a Web 2.0 clusterfest — the bloggers have gone mad trying to guess which piece of flipmeat Fox chowed down on. Or, as VC blogger Paul Kedrosky puts it, Fox bought itself "a kazoo chorus of unwitting hype-meisters noisily playing the 'guess the company' game."
Valley superblog TechCrunch came out yesterday with exclusive video of a buyout un-announcement at yesterday's Under the Radar conference. The admission came from Ross Levinsohn during an on-stage interview with TechCrunch owner Michael Arrington. The Fox Interactive president paused and blurted, "We have bought someone in this room."
Didn't wanna pick on OneWebDay, the worldwide celebration of the Web (based on that most revered and respected of holidays, Earth Day). But I knew it was fair game when the usually gentle TechCrunch pundit Michael Arrington asked, "Is there a point to this that I'm missing?" (Fun fact: Arrington's first title was "What the hell is this crap?" I am not making this up.)
In case you didn't catch it earlier (we didn't), Lot 49 built a thorough Google Evil Scale. Includes the wise corporate maxim, "Don't be an accessory to evil." [Google Corporate Information: Making Money]
A petition tells AOL to drop its new certified mail system (where users pay to get whitelisted and free e-mails end up getting spam-filtered away). Signers include the Democratic National Committee, Craig Newmark of Craigslist, the AFL-CIO, and others. Better plan: let AOL carry on, thus ensuring that the last poor fools using AOL mail will finally leave. [Dear AOL]
Blogger Michael Arrington, running from the hordes of TechCrunch party guests, may flee to London so his sixth party can actually fit inside the venue. [CrunchNotes]
A little groaning about Apple's less-than-fun Tuesday announcement. Bloggers can't decide whether to hate Apple for not changing the world again this month, or to hate each other for posting fake photos of an iPod Video. [Good Morning Silicon Valley]
Michael Arrington can't be as positive as he always sounds on TechCrunch, can he? Today's "Mike's true feelings" meter: How much distance is between him and the entrepreneurs he's always photographed with? For instance, Mike's keeping some distance from the Israeli businessmen pictured above (that's him on the far right). But that one overlapped arm is just enough to say "I won't run away. These guys have a chance." [TechCrunch]
