Bad news if you enjoy seeing corporate Twitter accounts hacked and hijacked as often as possible: Twitter has finally added the option of enabling two-factor authentication for your account. Once you flip the switch, you’ll have to enter a six-digit code sent to your cell phone in order to complete the log-in Read More
Peter Gabriel to Sledgehammer music industry Cuesongs, Peter Gabriels’ song rights company, is planning on the “genesis” of a new way of legal music listening by a partnership with Audiosocket, a music licensing and technology business here in the US. The Brit’s company, which includes music from Dido, Groove Armada and Ziggy Marley, plans to license its artists to Audiosocket, whose customers include systems like Vimeo. They hope that it will give legitimate access to music fans while simultaneously paying artists. Here’s hoping it will bring the stop-motion awesomeness of his 1987 video back into fashion. Read More
Yesterday, Crain’s reported on some eye-popping Tumblr numbers from PrivCo, suggesting VCs reaped huge rewards, including a 5,000 percent return of $253 million for Union Square Ventures, $154 million for Spark Capital, and $77 million for Spark partner Bijan Sabet.
Almost immediately, Bijan Sabet and Fred Wilson fired back, calling the report “garbage” and refuting the specifics (without coughing up what they actually made). Dan Primack (who’s tangled with PrivCo before) calls the report “a load of Yahoo.” He says USV and Spark actually put $13 million each into the company ($350,000 of it seed funding) and got around $192 million each. Not too shabby, but not the jackpot PrivCo alleges, either.
Well, this morning PrivCo responded to the critics, on Twitter, with all the rancor appropriate to the medium. Read More
Dig out your folder of Gossip Girl short stories, because Amazon has figured out a way to make some cold, hard cash on derivative works. You know, other than just replacing all the names and selling it to a publisher.
Fan fiction is dead! Long live fan fiction! Read More
Could our culture be any more saturated with hackathons? Now even the publishing business has latched onto them. [The Atlantic]
The creator of the GIF insists it’s pronounced “jif,” and no one will listen to him, not even the Oxford English Dictionary. Also, the dancing baby is still one of his favorites. [New York Times]
The immigration reform bill is headed to the Senate floor, which means FWD.us finally racked up a victory, of sorts, instead of just accumulating bad press for throwing the Alaskan caribou under the bus. [AllThingsD]
Microsoft just debuted a new Xbox, in case you were wondering what your spoiled nephew would be demanding for Christmas this year. [Wired]
Order us up a dish of crow, because we might get a few more angels out of this Tumblr deal than we initially suspected. Crain’s has analysis of the deal from PrivCo, and if these numbers are right, the company’s investors, at least, made out none too shabby. Read More
Get ready to retire the term “sober as a judge,” because we’re about to explode your notion of America’s legal system as staid and dignified. The New York Times reports that courts are, increasingly, turning to Urban Dictionary, that Internet cesspool tended by dirty-minded 14-year-olds, as an authoritative source on slang.
Tim Cook and other Apple representatives are on Capital Hill today, answering questions about why the company doesn’t pay any more taxes here in the U.S. of A. Senator Carl Levin is currently waving around his iPhone and grilling the lot of them about their Irish subsidiaries.
However, crotchety old John McCain wanted some answers Read More
Chief Yahoo Marissa Mayer looked pretty damn chipper as she took the stage in a small room overlooking Times Square, late yesterday afternoon.
Technically, the press had gathered for the announcement of a revamped Flickr. (It’s biggr! It’s spectaculr!) An entire lounge had been papered over with giant images pulled from the service, and in the square below a mob of T-shirt-wearing fans/paid actors were jumping up and down and hollering and waving Flickr signs in celebration.
But with David Karp slouched in the front row, it was clear this was about more than the addition of full-bleed photos to a decade-old service. Read More
Marco’s confident Tumblr made the right call: “This is clearly what David believes is best for his product. On such big decisions, he hasn’t been wrong yet. This time, though, I don’t have any doubts.” [Marco.org]
Dave Winer, on the other hand: “When you sell your company, no matter what promises were made, you sold it. It’s theirs now. They will do what they want to with it. Promises don’t matter.” [Scripting News]
Sounds like former Tumblr president John Maloney is just irked he’s being left out of the story. [Twitter]
Fab is reportedly raising a round somewhere in the ballpark of $250 million to $300 million, pushing the company’s valuation north of a billion dollars. [Wall Street Journal]
The Senate, meanwhile, says Apple dodged, oh, about $44 billion in taxes. [Politico]
