Digg Archive

My Husband Gets Transported Back to Junior High (In a Good Way!)

(This is the second in a series of guest posts that I hope will become more frequent on sarahlacy.com-- despite the name of the site! Especially the next few days because I'm in New York absurdly pimping my book and shooting for Yahoo. This one is by my lovely husband Geoffrey Ellis, who couldn't stop gushing about this site, so I asked him to write about it.)

I was a total mixtape nerd back in the day.

Before the whole CD revolution, I was all about vinyl. I'd make at least one mixtape a week. It was a huge challenge to fit the exact amount of songs onto one side of a cassette. Not only was fitting the songs a challenge, but ordering them so they made sense was part of the fun.

Here is the ultra-geek part of it all: It was exhilarating. I lived for it - thinking about it all week, making little notes to myself. So the second I discovered muxtape.com and read the words-- "Muxtape is a service for creating mixtapes"-- I felt transported back to my days of skateboarding, working part-time in record stores and living the life of relatively low responsibility.

Your Chance to Mock Valley Millionaires

So when you write a book, people and companies keep asking-- even begging-- to throw you a book release party. Then, publication comes, and you hear crickets. Also, bookstores apparently almost never do signings anymore. So I'm throwing my own party on my release date May 15. Here's the link to the open Facebook invitation. It's open to everyone, but the place (TBA soon) maxes out at about 100 people so no promises there won't be a line for latecomers!

Everything at the party is mostly donated (including the time of my friend Johanna Lopez who is organizing!) A generous sponsor appears to be white-knighting in to take care of a few expenses in exchange for me signing my hand off for a pile of books. (Happy to do it, people!) Because I sort of sprung this on Penguin, I will be fronting the cost for the books so you guys better buy copies!!

Anyway, more on the details later today. For now, your help on the drink list. A few liquor vendors are donating spirits, and we'll be coming up with cocktails named after the moguls in the book. I have an idea for "The Kevin Rose" and "The Max Levchin" already, but figured in honor of Web 2.0 and user generated content I'd solicit some suggestions for the others.

Googling, PayPaling and TiVoing Away

Amid my beaming pride for my book subjects Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Arrington* and Jay Adelson being named as a few of Time's 100 Most Influential People, I read something that annoyed me in Jay's write up and it has festered for days:

"For a web company, there may be no better definition of total, unconditional victory than seeing your name become a verb. So far, that club includes Google and...nobody else. But if you had to predict the next tech brand to make the leap, Digg would be a good guess."

Google is the only one??? First off, with more than a million users "Digging" stories, I'd give Digg verb status. And I'd say others have definitely made that leap. More than a hundred billion dollars are "PayPaled" around the Web every year, and a sportscaster on TV just made reference to "TiVoing" something. (OK, TiVo isn't pure Web. But was made possible by the Net's connectivity and a 1990s boom-baby so I'm counting it.) And what about "Oh, snap! I've been meaning to NetFlix that movie!" Any others I'm missing?

[*While there are several chapters devoted to Jay and Mark, truthfully, Arrington only shows up in a few brief scenes in the book. So if you are some crazed Arrington mega-fan, I don't want you to buy it and be disappointed.]

Yeah, Cause Mark Zuckerberg Is the *Only* One

This is wrong. Not in the moralistic kinda way, but there's no way this methodology is good. From the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation:

Based on a study taken of U.S. entrepreneurs, who founded their companies between 1995-2005, it found the median age of U.S. born founders was 39 years-old, with only 1 percent

launching their company as teen-agers

. And for those in their 50s, there's still hope - twice as many folks in this age group founded a tech company than those in their early 20s, according to the study.

Digg v. Yahoo = Community v. Traffic

Slammed at, ahem, Yahoo today working on a few cool pieces I'll post here as soon as they're up. But I wanted to weigh in real quick on another Yahoo group who's working away: the would-be Digg killer "Buzz." Buzz clearly isn't innovative. Initial reviews were it was a badly done, purple version of Digg. New features launched today, and I'm curious if people think it's better.

Of course, features aside, Buzz will never have Silicon Valley/early adopter love. I'd go so far as to say it'll never even have fan boys. (Even Calacanis had fan boys!)

Meebo Comes Down with Wall Street Fever Too

No no, they aren't going public. But they have gone the east coast institutional money round along with Ning, Slide, Glam and others, according to TechCrunch. Per my Businessweek column and video on TT, we can now put Meebo in the category of "Not For Sale." Digg is one of the only ones on my list who hasn't yet raised what I'm calling a "recession round."

I've never really gotten where the business is in Meebo, but I know a lot of people love the service and I've always liked the founders a great deal on a personal level. They are savvy entrepreneurs. I hope the cash infusion helps them figure out the business model so bored students on library computers everywhere can continue to IM one another.

Twitter Raises $20 M? That's News, Why?

Twitter has raised between $15 m and $20 m according to Cnet. Twitter's next round of cash has been a subject of much blogging and speculation and scrambling around trying to get the scoop. I haven't been doing any of that, frankly. Because "scoops" are only interesting when they're surprising and Twitter raising a fat round of venture capital is in no way surprising.

Four reasons follow on the jump.

Even Better than My Wired Review...

...is my review by Paul C(K)arr. I know it was hard for him to be nice, so that makes it doubly special. Maybe even triply. For people (my mom and husband) who don't want to read all of the SXSW related stuff about me in the post, here's the PG version of his book review (on the jump). See, now if i could just tie every Sarah-Lacy-Twitter-Hater (tm) down and MAKE them read my book, they'd love me too!! Seriously, thanks Paul. From someone who knows the struggle of writing-for-pay, it means a lot.