Weblogs Archive

What I've Been up to...

I've been quite the juggler so far this week, so I thought I'd link to some of the stuff I've been up to.

Here's my latest BusinessWeek column. It talks about the erosion of local advertising amid newspapers and why we don't care enough that they're going away to, oh, say, subscribe. Further, I throw doubt on this whole idea that these local ads will flood online creating the next great market. Needless to say, it's created some controversy and push back. A dozen or so companies have written me to tell me they're indeed selling ads to local companies. I don't doubt it. My point is it's near impossible to build one huge-billion dollar business selling ads in local markets throughout the country. It's a bit like the push back I got on my software as a service column. Yeah, customers love it and you can get to $10 million-$50 million in revenues pretty easily. If that's the new end goal for venture backed startups the Valley is in trouble.

Meanwhile, I've also been busy deriding Sirius and actually defending Google over at TechCrunch. And below is the first installment of a four part series of interviews with the controversial Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. It's a longer clip than we usually run, but I found the stuff at the end about why Wikipedia doesn't put ads on its site particularly interesting. Enjoy!

It's February 5 and I'm off to Africa

Why? That's not important. What's important is that I'm fully-- FULLY-- vaccinated. I've also got anti-malarials and cipro. I won't be blogging or Twittering much while I'm gone, so enjoy this little farewell video shot from the floor of the San Francisco Department of Health. When I get back, it's TechCrunch time!

Ow ow ow ow ow! from sarah lacy on Vimeo.

BTW: this is what my arms felt like the next day. Wait for it...

Can I Make It at TechCrunch Two Weeks? Vote!

Duncan Riley over at The Inquisitr has a poll asking how long I can last at TechCrunch. It's actually an incredibly complimentary post. I mean, I want this on my tombstone:

But Duncan details how tough of a battleground that blog has been for women. He aptly sums up every reason Mr. Lacy didn't want me to help Arrington out. I, for one, can't imagine any comments worse than the ones I got at SXSW or get daily on TechTicker. I think Duncan underestimates how much people already hate me!

But he is right that I don't mince words or opinions. So, readers, you know me pretty well. What do you think? Can I last two weeks? Head on over and vote!

It's Not Often I'm Speechless.

I really don't know what to say about Michael Arrington and the whole spitting thing. Let's start with the fact that the clip of me throwing water on him is no longer as funny to me as it was yesterday, even though it was clearly staged and you can hear me laughing as I walk off.

I thought about penning a quick column for BusinessWeek about the topic, but it was just too close to home. After all, I've got some experience here. I haven't ever been spat on (yet), but I have had a few very disturbing physical things happen to me over the last few years, and more than a few threats. And at least once a day someone, somewhere online says something brutally mean about me. Notice I didn't say "something about my work"-- something about me personally. And 99.99% of the time, they've never met me.

But more to the point, Michael is a good friend of mine and I know him. I know him well enough to know the characterization of this ValleyWag post is utter bullshit. Michael didn't seek out being famous. That doesn't even make sense. He started TechCrunch at a time when startups were utterly unsexy, and no one thought you could build a huge media business off a blog. Michael eschews the limelight more than he seeks it. He spends most of his time at home, working hard, not out talking about it. He does a fraction of the press and appearances he could do. (Trust me, he's bailed on me more than a few times!) And even at Valley parties, he's usually off to the side or sitting in the back somewhere talking to entrepreneurs. And he's turned down many funding and acquisition opportunities for TechCrunch. He's stashed away at least a year's worth of revenues, so this is hardly some Web 2.0 pony he was trying to run until it died, and now having failed, he's looking for an out. Please. Michael is hardly a saint; if you're going to say something mean about him, why completely make it up?

On the flip side was Paul Carr's column in the Guardian. Paul-- like the Gawker crew-- is outrageously snarky. And really, he's far better at that game than most of Gawker Inc, his excellency Nick Denton aside of course. Paul brilliantly writes about the online currency of mean, which I've written about a good deal too, but he writes about it from the point of view of someone who profits off of doing it, not being the subject of it. Paul and I are good friends, which strikes a lot of people as weird, since I'm one of the people he has profited off trashing. But if you read that column, you understand why.

The reason I'm so speechless given all the strong feelings I have about this issue, is that I fear there's no solution and that worries me. If Ivory Tower print media is truly dying, and we're all going interactive, it's going to severely limit the pool of people willing to be journalists. It's one thing to expect this kind of abuse and scrutiny if you're a Hollywood celebrity, a public company CEO or a politician. But someone writing about startups? Why? That shouldn't come with the territory. We shouldn't even be that interesting!

If Michael stays away longer than a month--which I don't think he will--it will be a huge loss for Silicon Valley. Look at TechCrunch50; look at the Crunchies; look at the daily blogging of a broader swath of tiny unheard of startups than any other site. TechCrunch is the best friend entrepreneurs have had over the last few years, and no offense to the team there, but Michael is hands-down the best blogger on the site.

As for me, I have no intention of running away. For one thing, a lot of the abuse I get is because I'm a woman. (Trust me, you just don't want details here.) For the sake of other women, I'm not letting anyone get away with that kind of gender bullying. But there may well come a time, as it has for Arrington for now, where my safety and the toll it takes on my loved ones is just not worth writing another story.

A Prolific Little Valley Girl...

Trying to get back to some regularity with my BusinessWeek columns. This one posted tonight for tomorrow, and I'm quite proud of it. It keys off a lot of things I've been writing about on this blog: The hollowness of engineering traffic, obnoxiousness of sites like Twply, and my frustration with too many people trying to game the system versus just build a good product or create good content. It all came together around this idea of Web 2.0 killing the last metric that matters for advertisers: The unique user.

It was an observation Roger McNamee made in the Yahoo greenroom when he came by the studio a few weeks ago, and it's been working its way around my head since, so I fully credit him.

Speaking of Valley Girl, here's my previous column in case you missed it. It has to do with corporate layoffs and features a shout out to Mr. Nathan Wright of Des Moines who I met on the book tour!

If you read the blog a lot, you probably notice a lot of similar themes work themselves out here, then later wind up in a column or on TechTicker. Writing is like thinking, and my commenters always help me sharpen my thinking. You let me know when I'm on to something and push me on another angle when I'm blind to it. So thanks, everyone. Instead of cutting you in on my paycheck, I'll just refrain from annoying you with ads on this site. Deal?

NOW, speaking of Roger McNamee, I have some news. He cut his hair! Background: Roger's hair ignited quite an uproar among TechTicker commenters. I'm sorry-- he's Roger McNamee, a former top fund manager and one of the most successful Valley investors and he's giving you investing advice and you're upset about his hair??? As I Twittered at the time it was an act of civil disobedience against the policies of the Bush administration. Roger says once he got confirmation that Bush was safely back in Texas he cut off a whopping 14 inches giving it to Locks of Love. I don't have an "after" picture, but below is the before, in video form:

We've Been in Idiot Land a While Now, Scoble. Get Comfortable.

Robert Scoble has a heartfelt post today that sums up his frustration with noise becoming more important than substance. Well, welcome to journalism in the Internet age. Actually, welcome to journalism period. It's just more pronounced in an age when we can measure how stories do and tend to place value on them solely for that reason. And it's in no way limited to Tech. If it were, CNN wouldn't be reporting on Paris Hilton.

This was a huge personal frustration when I was at BusinessWeek covering startups before they were hot again and important, but unsexy, technology trends like open source software. I would spend months breaking a story with huge impact, only to be dwarfed by traffic for a story that just rehashed the latest Apple rumor. To BusinessWeek's great credit, they still run those unsexy stories prominently, because the BusinessWeek brand of delivering all the news business people need is just as important as sheer page views. (Ahem, they also renewed my columnist contract for another year. Thanks, John Byrne!)

But is this the same in the blog world? Where the whole business is predicated on page views?

I Only Need 8 Jillion More Page Views to Make Rent. Call Your Friends!

In my continuing rant on how most of us are going about blogging monetization all wrong, we get this gem from AdAge.com this week. The headline trumpets that News-Oriented Websites Have a Future. First reaction: Oh thank God, my profession is saved.

We all know traditional media is hopelessly screwed, right? Right. And most of us know that online arms of traditional media agencies aren't really picking up the slack, creating a pretty worrying scenario. Especially because the last few years for media have already been looking like Fall 2008 looked for Wall Street, and now we're entering an undoubtedly horrible year for advertising with no Olympics, no election, no good one-time catalyst to give us a boost.

There is a future for media. There is a business model there. But I think I speak for most journalists when I say we're starting to feel like Moses's people wandering in the desert for 40-years. So was this headline from AdAge a coming attraction of the promised land? Hardly.

Controversy at Le Web? Sacre Bleu!

I had to skip this year's Le Web conference, and I have to say, as much as I enjoyed it last year, on Monday I was so happy not to be jet lagged (again) and cold. (Well, colder than it is in my non-heated house. Brrrrrrr!)

Of course, when I travel to conferences I never get the posh treatment of Michael Arrington, who has apparently picked a fight with Loic about American vs. European entrepreneurs. Loic answers back here. As someone who has gone on four trips to Europe in the last year and has met with hundreds of entrepreneurs, here are my thoughts.

First, Loic is right when he says at the end of the post that this is no longer an interesting or meaningful debate. That said, like it or not, we'll keep having it because of the stark and honest reality that Michael describes:

"...the joy of life is great, but all these two hour lunches over a bottle or two of great wine and general unwillingness to do whatever it takes to compete and win is the reason why all the big public Internet companies are U.S. based. And those European startups that do manage to break through cultural and tax hurdles and find success are quickly gobbled up by those U.S. companies. Skype (acquired by eBay) and MySQL (acquired by Sun) are recent examples.

The crowd jeered but the stark reality of it all is unavoidable. And the fact that the panelists on stage, all either American or living in America, suggested that you can somehow succeed with a startup while maintaining a healthy work-life balance is unfortunate. Too many people choose to be entrepreneurs as a lifestyle, without realizing that it takes everything you have and more to win. And if you aren’t in it to win, why not just take that nice job down the street that gives you five weeks of vacation."

I couldn't agree with Michael more. I think we're going to see entrepreneurship explode globally over the next decade; but as of now, there are very, very, very few examples of startups that have become billion dollar, stand-alone companies that are not at least headquartered in the Valley. So as a result, sharp entrepreneurs around the world who I've met want to know what the Valley does well. And what the Valley does well is tireless work. During several of my book tour stops in the Midwest and the South I was asked if you could have a family and be an entrepreneur. You can. But not if you are trying to build the next Google or Facebook. There is no work life balance at that level. Again, know the game you are playing.

That said, I am not sure what Silicon Valley Loic is living in when he writes this:

"There is a huge difference between being lazy and taking time to know each other. It is one of the main cultural differences I feel everyday as I moved to Silicon Valley: every minute, every coffee, every phone call must have a point. When you call someone in Silicon Valley for anything you will likely get "why are you calling me?" ...

...Don't even think about starting a conversation in Silicon Valley by "how was your week-end" or "how are your kids", they all want you to go straight to the point and no time to lose. I never thought inviting someone I really liked to know better to dinner would get me an email from his assistant "why would you like to invite him to dinner?". I do not think europeans are lazy taking the time to know each other and build deep long term friendships that are not limited to business and I do not think this hurts Europe in any way. On the contrary."

As hard as we all work, this is in no way my experience. Everyday I IM, email or have calls with people that all start out with us chatting about our personal lives. In fact, my favorite conference, the Lobby, is entirely centered around that, which is a big reason most of the attendees bring their families. Several times a week I have long meandering dinners with entrepreneurs and investors where we talk about everything from entrepreneurship to family life to politics to tech and, yes, business. This is why I love living in the Valley. I'm rarely bored in a conversation.

The most extreme example was the research for my book. Incredibly busy entrepreneurs at the most crucial stages of building their companies took hours at a time to talk to me about life and work, repeatedly over more than a year's time. I was never asked what they'd be getting out of it. In fact, a lot of people have asked me why they gave up so much time, and I never have a great answer, because I never once had to have that conversation. So I asked Max Levchin that at the Churchill Club event we did. He looked a little stumped, as though he'd never really thought about it that way either, and said that he just thought telling the whole story of the Internet from the bust through this generation of companies and doing it right was somehow important.

Perhaps Loic just needs new friends in the Valley? ;)

[PHOTOS: Me interviewing Kevin Rose on stage at Le Web last year by Adam Tinworth. Me laughing it up with Le Web's incredibly talented content creator Cathy Brooks after one of those amazing French dinners. Doc Searls took a zillion photos that night of Mr. Lacy and me, Evan and Sara Williams, Jason Calacanis, Jeff Pulver, Pistachio and others chilling in the hotel lobby. If Loic was right...would all those people have flown to Paris just to hang out?]

It's Shout Out Morning Apparently: Nick Denton, You're Up

I wanted to blog about Denton's gloom and doom memo yesterday, but employers who actually pay me were angrily tapping their feet and pointing to the ticking clock. I didn't finish all that until 11ish or so, at which point Mr. Lacy was angrily tapping his foot and pointing to the clock. Of course, as the day unfolded, the memo got even more interesting with the closure of Valleywag and decision to fold its editor Owen Thomas into Gawker.

A small tribute to the 'Wag is in order. I've had a love-hate relationship with ValleyWag, but mostly love. No other blog has consistently, amusingly or absurdly written about me as ValleyWag. They've stepped over the line a few times, but mostly haven't been mean-spirited, even when loads of other bloggers were. Also, they've always strictly respected my wishes not to invade my personal life and give Mr. Lacy his privacy as a non-Internet "civilian," and even stayed away from skewering Olivia.

Valleywag's "Sarah Lacy" tag shows 80 posts-- many of which I'd never even seen! The most absurd thing they ever wrote? Nick Douglas' post that I'd gotten a half a million dollar book deal. I laughed when he asked me if it was true, and asked if he knew anything about publishing economics, which he apparently took as confirmation. The most inconsequential post about me? That's tough but I'm going to say the one about what shoes I was wearing to the Crunchies. The one everyone wished was true? The one that said I threw a drink in Michael Arrington's face at the first lobby. (Always the people pleaser, I rectified that disappointment here.)

Of course the single most famous post about me was written by Nick Denton himself, "Smoking Sarah Lacy." You'll notice before this post it was nearly impossible to find a photo of me online-- and believe me bloggers tried hard in the wake of the oh-so-scandalous Digg cover. I always laugh when people talk about how "self-promotional" I am, given that for ten years of my career you never knew a thing about me other than my byline.

That wasn't an accident. People judge women harshly and I always wanted my career to be about good journalism, not my personality, gender, clothes or looks. My husband-- a photographer-- didn't even post any photos of me on his blog or Flickr account. I fought with BusinessWeek when they said I had to have a blog photo, and then picked a pretty unflattering one.

More Pain Coming for Online Video

My sympathies go out to the people behind the shows canceled on Revision3 last week. Clearly, a lot of fans were upset. You could see it in the comments on CEO Jim Louderback's blog: People loved the shows that were canceled and outraged that Rev3 would do such a thing. That outrage fed itself as they read each others comments. "See! Other people loved these shows too! How could you cancel them?!?!?!"

I have no doubt they were loved and no doubt Jim did the right thing. And that weird dichotomy shows why we still don't have full-fledged original content channels online: Video is hard to do well and video is expensive.

That causes two problems that are still hurting original video content online especially as we enter a protracted downturn: Audience and money.