R ex S orgatz

David Carr came out bullish on Buzzfeed, while Paul Carr rebuffs him. It's too early to tell what Buzzfeed will do, but I will say that Paul gets this part wrong:

[Peretti] is a career-long SEO guy whose entire news sense is based on what people are already searching for, or what they might be sharing on Facebook tomorrow tomorrow. The first half of that equation -- the SEO half -- is inherently opposed to breaking news. If something hasn't yet been reported, then no-one is searching for it.

That's not true, and the best example of which is Kottke's subtle parody of HuffPo on Superbowl Sunday.

music

4 comments

Sasha thinks that MIA not should have apologized for flipping the bird. I guess, sure? But that seems a particularly red shade of herring. As someone wrote on my Facebook wall when I asked "What exactly was she trying to say by flipping you off?":

That at the last instant, after making the song, being in the video, going through gigantic rehearsals, meeting with execs from the NFL and NBC, and Madonna's handlers, she felt she had to do something, anything in reaction to the massive, moneyed, orchestrated alternate really bubble she'd already bought into a thousand times over leading up to that moment.

Or it's pure ego, and she wanted the attention.

media

1 comment

Early last year, I told Elizabeth Spiers that Felix Salmon had made a bet with John Carney: she would be fired from The Observer within a year. It didn't happen; Felix lost the bet, in somewhat grumpy prose.

All the interesting hires, the chatter about new properties, the return of the old tagline, the blog launches, the print format switch -- for the first time in a long time, The Observer has been fun to watch. I choose that infinitive carefully, because this is what Felix overlooked in the media parlor game: watching beats reading any day.

media

We already proved that we could have a trailer for anything when Charlie O'Donnell created a trailer for a venture fund:

But Esquire goes even further, with trailer for a magazine article:

[via]

music

2 comments

So, two questions:

1) Who exactly is MIA flipping off? It's you, right?

2) What exactly is she trying to say with this?

MIAflip

music

sunday

In addition to Weekend Edition subtly asking for some slack for Lana Del Rey, Liz Phair also whips up an op-ed for WSJ.

Lana Del Rey is exactly what I was hoping to inspire when I took on the male rock establishment almost twenty years ago with my debut record, Exile In Guyville.

In other SNL music act news, I think Bon Iver is the new Michael McDonald.

tech

sunday

Why L.A.'s Start-up Scene Beats All Others. The uber-argument in this one is that talent is easier to find, but there's also this bit:

There wasn't initially easy access to venture capital in L.A. and entrepreneurs had no choice but to build profitable business models from the start.

The exactly opposite could also be argued -- that for L.A. to succeed it needs greater access to venture capital. But there's the start to some ideas in there.

sunday

The Death of the Cyberflaneur argues that the web once seemed a place for the anonymously strolling (not trolling) flaneur:

Transcending its original playful identity, it's no longer a place for strolling -- it's a place for getting things done. Hardly anyone "surfs" the Web anymore. The popularity of the "app paradigm," whereby dedicated mobile and tablet applications help us accomplish what we want without ever opening the browser or visiting the rest of the Internet, has made cyberflanerie less likely.

It then goes on to blame Facebook for much of this problem.

friday

Five things that intrigue me right now:

1) Will Wright Is Back. Whah! “If we had that much situational awareness about you and at the same time we were building this very high-level map of the world, and I don’t just mean where Starbuck’s is, but all sorts of things like historical footnotes and people you might want to meet. I started thinking about games that we can build that would allow us to triangulate you in that space and build that deep situational awareness.” And maybe it includes a TV component! (His 2007 SXSW keynote is still my all-time favorite.)

2) Just.Me. Looks interesting, love the name.

3) Denton’s Memo. Okay, this commenting system (Pow-Wow) could be the real deal. However, I doubt that the product itself will be that revolutionary — I mean, how much can we do with comments? But the power will be in pairing it with an editorial agenda. Imagine if something like Reddit or Metafilter were more programmed, had the power of a media enterprise around it.

4) Newsright Launches. Sigh. These guys keep trying.

5) VYou 2.0. VYou comes out of Beta on Monday.

monday

Five things that intrigue me right now:

1) North Koreans weeping hysterically over the death of Kim Jong-il. THEY ALL DESERVE OSCARS. (This video will be a pervasive meme in 5… 4…)

2) WHERETHEFUCKSHOULDIGOFORDRINKS. (dot-com)

3) Distrust That Particular Flavor. William Gibson has a book of non-fiction coming out next month.

4) Rob Delaney’s new Comedy Central Show Using Twitter. Also, the design of those new FastCo pages!

5) Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works.

friday

3 comments

Five things that intrigue me right now:

1) The Spielberg Face. Once you’ve seen it, you can never not see it.

2) The 20 Unhappiest People You Meet In The Comments Sections Of Year-End Lists. Yes.

3) WhoSay Strikes Deal With AP. The future is celebrities owning and distributing their own gossip.

4) Ebert’s Best Films of 2011. Someone kept Drive on their list!

5) Jack Shafer: Are you reading the best magazine in America? I’ve been telling anyone who will listen that Bloomberg Businessweek is my favorite magazine right now. (Also, props to Reuters for hiring Shafer and letting him write so glowingly about their primary competitor.)

thursday

5 comments

Five things that intrigue me right now:

1) 25 Most Viral People. (On the internet.)

2) VCs Predict What Will Happen In 2012.

3) CNN: A Social Media Addict Tries to Disconnect. Day 1: “I land at Antigua’s airport, where I’m greeted by warm sunshine, a long customs line and a man playing Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’ on a tin drum. All of these observations are ones I ache to tweet.” Hrrrrm.

4) The Death of Television. From Evan Shapiro of IFC, who is probably the smartest tv exec I’ve ever worked with.

5) SAY Media. For most of 2011, Aol was the most interesting company on the digital media scene — every week was a new product launch, a new purchase, a new scandal, a new reorg. For 2012, SAY Media could take its place. For several years, people in the industry have heard various rumors of a “blog rollup.” It’s never happened because most of the time these companies stall after buying one or two properties. But SAY Media is really giving it a go. Sure, xoJane hasn’t performed that well, and the mishap with Rookie didn’t help, but by most accounts Dogster is doing well, and snagging Frommer with its purchase of Read Write Web is tantalizing. (And the reported $5M price tag indicates they’re being tactical and might not burn out.) Now there’s rumors of an IPO, plus some chatter about a revved up CMS. You never would have guessed that the merger of a blog platform and a video ad network would lead to anything, but prepare to hear endless stories about it in 2012.

wednesday

1) VC Memes. Well. Done.

2) All the End Of Year Stuff At Pitchfork.

3) Biz Insider Launched an Advertising Vertical Last Week. Servicey.

4) Best New Blogs of 2011.

5) P.R. Stunts in a Digital Era. “A lot of brands are seeing the value in a P.R. rep who has an online persona that can be used to magnify the brand message.” Some boner actually said that.