Media Archive

MY NAME IS SARAH LACY AND I HAVE AN ASSISTANT.

Geoff and I have been giggling about this all morning because it's just so indicative of my life right now. About a month ago, I Twittered (and talked about to anyone who would listen) about how happy I was when I hired a personal assistant, prompting Valleywag to gently mock me in a post even called, "Now We Can Breathe: Sarah Lacy Has Found an Assistant." Now, today, this site is "calling me out" for not calling her an assistant as if it's some nefarious plot. Um, I guess the Internet wasn't a big enough forum?  LOL

Save the Assistants? Meet Google.

(BTW, I'm only teasing the site. I'm glad someone is looking out for assistants everywhere!)

Quite Different from Playboy and almost as Suprising

Another list I'm on today: NowPublic's tally of the Web's 50 Most Influential People in Silicon Valley. I'm a respectable #35. Thanks for the props guys!

But more to the point: It struck me how few "traditional" journalists are on this list. I can count them on one hand. Obviously, a group focused on "crowd powered media" is probably going to weigh things differently than if, say, a consortium of newspapers was coming up with it. Still, it pretty much sums up the two sides of the media business right now: There's a ton of pain on the traditional print side as people still grapple with the best ways to be relevant online BUT if you embrace it, iterate, experiment there's a ton of opportunity amid the chaos.

I know I wrote something critical this morning about the blog-induced 20-second hype cycle, but all things considered, I think it's a great sign of the media industry's health that so many new voices-- and new types of voices-- have become so relevant and influential so fast.

Although, as I was discussing this with my BW editor Tom Giles today, (Sorry! You didn't say off the record! ;) ) he noted that individual brands are very hard to sustain, not to mention scale. After all few of us have the energy of Robert Scoble, who may secretly have clones or twins running around with all that video equipment. Tom is right. That's why I try to have the best of both worlds: I work for myself, but heavily contract out to two strong brands in Yahoo and BusinessWeek. We'll see how long I can stay relevant!

Really: Is it Cuil or Us?

Pretty harsh post on TechCrunch this morning about how Cuil "blew" it's launch in 20 seconds. It talks about the absurdly short hype-cycle of less than a minute on today's Web.

I'll be the first to say I was disappointed in the early results of a company that a lot of people I respect think very highly of. And I, too, was a bit stunned after raising that much cash and working so hard, they would launch now. And they should have kept their messaging to indexing more cheaply, the UI and privacy-- not touting greater relevancy, obviously. (We didn't even mention that one in our TT piece, because I hadn't gotten enough time to play with it.)

So yeah, they screwed some things up. But doesn't part of the blame go to the blogosphere? I'm counting me in that too. I was probably too effusive. Like everyone else in the Valley, I find technology and new companies exciting and Cuil has a great story. But you don't make up for that by then eviscerating a company. It doesn't somehow balance out in the greater cosmic order. TechCrunch says the whole thing was Cuil's fault because they didn't let pre-briefed bloggers use the service. Ok, that was dumb, but take some responsibility! No one forced you to write a glowing piece before you'd used the site. If I erred in being too excited about Cuil, that was my bad as a reporter, not the company's. (For the record, I seem to be the only blogger in the land who didn't get a pre-brief, I had just heard a lot about the company from sources for more than a year so I'd been anxious to check it out for some time.)

At some point, the tech blogosphere has to break itself from the junky-like addiction of having to get a story two seconds before the competitor. Can it really drive that much traffic when every other blogger got the same pre-brief? Isn't it better to wait a bit, use the service and write something smarter?

If we've got a 20-second hype cycle in the Valley, that's not Cuil's fault. And I don't think it's serving readers well either. If we write something is amazing in the morning and then total junk in the afternoon, does anyone looking to tech blogs for analysis keep coming back?

I, for one, am not writing the company off after one day. Launches are hard. How many of the products we use and rely on today were perfect the day they launched? I've invited the founders to come on TechTicker and hope they accept. I'd love to hear their thoughts on why the launch day went the way it did and whether they're worried about the backlash or just chalk it up to the increasingly schizophrenic blogosphere.

What's Up, Bitches?

That's what I jokingly titled my column I just filed for BusinessWeek. (Late, again.) The column was about women in Silicon Valley, a topic my very benevolent, smart and good looking BW overlords asked me to tackle. (Can you tell I'm trying not to get fired for so many late columns?)

My first reaction was "Sure, I can write that in my sleep!" But it wound up being incredibly hard. For one thing, I think the position of women in the Valley is really at a crossroads and I wasn't initially sure how to wrap my head around a lot of conflicting data points. And contrary to popular opinion we don't all move in lock-step making sweeping generalizations pretty hard. Anyway, read the column later this week to see how I sorted it all out.

A woman's place in this industry has been heavy on my mind lately. First, there was that whole Playboy thing that so many people freaked out about, then this odd occurrence at the TechCrunch party (more funny in its textbook "what-you-don't-say" quality than truly offensive) and the most recent visit to the Valley from the girl no one can agree on: Miss Julia Allison. As you know from reading this blog, I like Julia. Is she any kind of serious tech or business journalist? No. But she's not trying to be. After having many a late night conversation with her about business and brand, I can say she's not just a fluke or a pretty face or a girl who had her career bestowed upon her by Nick Denton's magic wand. She's a savvy business woman and she's learned a lot in the last few years. I had her come by TechTicker to share her thoughts on why companies shouldn't be afraid to brand employees. Believe it or not, it's not too different from the advice Charlene Li gives companies in Groundswell. Clip below:

I get a lot of grief for being friends with Julia. But you know what? People also probably get grief for being friends with me. If there's one thing I've learned from my life on the Internet it's not to believe everything you read about people, but to meet them and judge for yourself.

Princess Leia Returns...

I was thrilled to find my black "thank God I don't have to fix my bangs today" headband hiding in a random drawer this morning. I hope to find many other lost items during our upcoming move. (Just over to the Mission-- you're not done with me, Silicon Valley!)

Here's a segment I did on the advertising numbers. Actually looking for someone to interview tomorrow about specific online ad business models if someone has a suggestion. My usual peeps can't make it.

What's in a Mogul?

Yes, I am alive. And I apologize for the radio silence. I was at All Things Digital last week and it was a lot of schmoozing until the wee hours of the morning combined with running around being all on-camera-reporter-y during the day. (I've been mulling a post on my love-hate relationship with the whole on camera thing, and if I'd written it, I'd link to it now to explain why the whole medium is endlessly more time-consuming and frustrating than just being a print reporter, even as it is also more rewarding. One day.)

At the end of the trip my boss's boss, Neeraj Khemlani, asked me to write a big think piece about D for Yahoo. A take-away about all the endless hallway chatter and late night conversations. It was a testament to D that most of it was actually about the conference program, but rather than discussing what the various high-powered keynoters were saying, it was more about the way they said it. It was like we were groupies talking about lead singers and Hollywood starlets.

As Neeraj and I talked about our impressions, I started to get an entirely new understanding on what it means to be a "mogul," which became the subject of my very, very long piece which you can read here.

Miranda: Me, You and Everyone We Know Need to Be Twittering

This is a guest post by my husband, photographer and designer Geoffrey Ellis. For other guest posts, hit the "guest post" tag.

I mailed a handwritten letter to Miranda July the other day. She is a film maker, writer, artist who I have a fondness for. Something about her style is very cool to me. I can't remember the last time I wrote a letter and put it in the mail, and I have never written to a celebrity. Ever. But I needed to tell her something and couldn't find an email on her site. So, I got out my pen and paper and 15 minutes later, it was in the hands of the post office.

My letter was a short plea for Miranda to sign up for Twitter. Mainly because I think she would be really good at it. I love the way she writes in small bursts with short quotes. I would love to get a sub-140 character tweet from her in the vein of her "Dear Sophie, everything I have is yours. Except my boyfriend. Love, Miranda July". Wouldn't that be great? Miranda and Twitter would be as good a combination as peanut butter and chocolate.

I'm not just being selfish here. I think Twitter would help Miranda too.

Twitter Is Down. Again.

I am not piling on. I'm not. I am frustrated that Twitter is down, again, yes. But I love the company enough I won't defect. And really, is it the end of the world if it's down? It's not as important to your day-to-day life as email right?

If you're a blogger, it might be.

Carl Ichan: Company Breaker or Wall Street Saviour?

I've been amazingly quiet on the latest Carl Ichan twists of the Microsoft-Yahoo saga. While the day-to-day news makes for fascinating early morning -- and increasingly weekend-- reading, I feel like we're basically saying a lot of the same things we've been saying from day one: The company belongs to the shareholders, Yahoo will eventually have to sell. I also always have to be careful reporting on this since I spend three days a week at Yahoo and want to respect the privacy of co-workers who talk about the deal as friends, not as sources. So, as I have to disclose all the time, I only report things I get from Yahoo sources, not as a Yahoo contractor.

All that said, Tech Ticker is about the view on Wall Street meeting the view in the Valley and there is no one who divides ranks more than Carl Ichan. Many people in the Valley view him as a destroyer of company value-- many people on Wall Street view him as someone who shakes management into unlocking nascent company value. (The fact that Ichan doesn't even own a computer certainly doesn't help his rep out here!) And ultimately, when you go public, the Wall Street view wins.

Here's some great analysis from Henry and Aaron today about Ichan, what his end game is and how much he's made so far. (As usual Henry can't seem to contain his excitment!) Also, they bring up a WSJ story that says Carnival has a faster growth rate than Yahoo. That might be the most damning stat I've seen. I've long argued that it was a management misstep for Yahoo to try to be Google, and continually allow itself to be compared to Google. But if you've got Yahoo's assets and can't grow faster than a cruise line that Kathy Lee Gifford used to shill for....Well, just watch because Henry says it better than I could.

Seeking My Own "Digital Wonderland"

Thought my life was calming down post-book launch? Wrong. My husband and I are also buying a house! (Thanks Web 2.0!) We should be closing on it this week. The lenders have taken their good sweet time dotting every i and crossing every t on every loan so they are just now getting to ours.

A flood of money is about to leave our bank account for the downpayment (yes, you need those again to buy a house in San Francisco) and closing costs and moving costs. But we're nestling a little away for what we hope will be our own "Digital Wonderland." The phrase is borrowed from my book, chapter 6, "Return of the King." Marc Andreessen used it to describe how he pimped out his new home last summer. Mine will obviously be nowhere near as pimp. In fact, it will likely take us a while to afford the dream.