If The Social Network is to be believed, entrepreneurs’ personalities tend to range from the charming Justin Timberlake ne’er do well to the hyperambitious social cretin played by Jesse Eisenberg.
Fortunately for the startup-inclined, Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson relishes the chance to work with people from across the personability spectrum.
Mr. Wilson observes Read More
New York and OkCupid have teamed up to create a Valentine’s Day heat map of horny NYers.
The data dynamos from OkCupid looked at how likely users from each zip code were to respond to online flirtations, as well as how they answered questions like, “If it were up to you, how often Read More
Zynga’s recent sitdowns with investors place a valuation of the Farmville gamemaker at somewhere between $7 billion and $9 billion, around double the $4 billion pricetag slapped on the company last April, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The potential $250 million investment makes Zynga the latest entry on a growing list of big Read More
The current tech boom is not a bubble yet, according to some investors in Silicon Alley.
In an interview with Fred Wilson for TechCrunch TV, Chris Dixon asks Fred Wilson what stage he thinks the early-stage technology investment market is in.
Mr. Dixon asserts that “the fundamentals are strong.” He brings up the word “bubble” Read More
In honor of Social Media Week, The Observer is anointing the 100 Funniest Tumblrs ever. They’re ordered from less funny to more funny, to help give readers the enthusiasm necessary to avoid click-through fatigue. And remember, the next time Tumblr goes down, this slideshow can provide that blogging fix.
Apple, the world’s leading purveyor of expensive consumer devices with rounded edges, may be developing some downmarket smartphones to compete with Google’s Android phones.
Bloomberg reports that Apple is working on an iPhone that’s cheaper and smaller than those currently available (are they making iPhones for small children? babies?), and the company is trying Read More
As talk of payouts for the exposure-hungry bloggers who contribute content to The Huffington Post ramps up, California’s Media Worker’s Guild is sponsoring a Facebook campaign asking Arianna Huffington to “spare a dime” out of the $315 million pricetag her company fetched in a recent merger with Aol.
Says the Media Worker’s Read More
Sort of fun to see a little bit of funding for an ad-tech company that isn’t consumer facing. New York Angels, the New York-oriented consortium of early-stage investors, has joined Canadian firm iNovia Capital in a $500,000 seed round for uKnow.
Founded in 2008, uKnow endeavors to help businesses identify online content Read More
Postling, the New York startup that raised a $350,000 seed investment in late January, has added some new wrinkles to its functionality.
TheNextWeb reports that Postling now allows clients to use email to reply to social-network communications. Those email replies will be then be posted to whatever social network delivered the message. The second Read More
Finally, a YouTube film noir that uses Foursquare as a parodic conceit! Seriously, though, this New York thriller is actually quite watchable, with lines like “This guy was a sleaze, and a bigger oversharer than Julia Allison.”
Check it out.
mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor
