Osama bin Laden was the talk of Twitter today, wasn’t he, and we regret to say none of these rumors are bin Laden-based. However, they are mostly about tech! Read on for office angling, kittens, and the petty trials of internet mad men.
OFFICE SHUFFLE. Many tenant shakeups at the NYU-Poly incubator today, we hear from a source, “mainly because the biggest tenant, Ecological, moved in to their own office.” Finally–Ecological announced its intention to move months ago; companies had been itching to move into their old space. The freshly be-officed start-ups include Weeels (carpooling, “social transit”), BestVendor.com (social recommendations), and “Two Lines and a Dot,” a consulting company that uses NYU-Poly students as labor. “Not really a tech company, as I understand,” source tells us.
MORE FROM THIS IS MY NEXT OFFICE: The Engadgeteers have a shiny new empty office in Union Square, Twttr taught us! We don’t know exactly where it is, but the former tenants had a strict “no kitties in the kitchen” policy. (Tumblr’s old server closet?)
SQUABBLES OF GAWKER?: Editor Jason Chen is getting pushed out of Gizmodo, a source told us last week, due to power struggles with editorial director Brian Lam. Minutes later, Mr. Chen announced he will be sitting in his same office, wearing his same clothes, but writing instead for Lifehacker and “doing some pretty interesting things over there—things that aren’t quite what you would expect” with no explanation for the move. What happened? Betabeat asked the first blogger to review the leaked iPhone 4. “Don’t know who you talked to, but I can tell you that going to Lifehacker was my choice. Should be exciting!” Mr. Chen said in an email.
OH TO BE A TUMBLR MOGUL: Tumblr’s editorial director Chris Price–that’s Topherchris, btw–wouldn’t tell Betabeat how many Tumblr followers he has (we’re guessing it’s about 62,735) but today he told the Tumblrs how many blogs he runs: at least 164. That’s some heavy viral firing power! But with great power comes great responsibility. “I have 164 blogs under my main topherchris account. I usually only run a handful at a time,” he admitted to users today.
WHERE TO FIND REDDITORS: Reddit co-daddy Alexis Ohanian will be shmoozing around the Radegast Hall and Biergarten in Williamsburg this weekend at the pre-launch party for Zach Weiner’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, the latest book o’comics funded by Mr. Ohanian’s uncorporation Breadpig. BUT: The party is taking over the usual bi-weekly Reddit gathering organized by New York readers via Meetup.com, a commoner event that luminaries Mr. Ohanian and Mr. Weiner do not usually attend. One Redditor had to politely request that Mr. Weiner RSVP on Meetup, and another commenter grumped: “You two should consider coming to our other meetups as well. We’re good people.”
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