(Photo: Twitter/successmagazine)

Earlier this week, Tumblr CEO David Karp took the stage at PaidContent Live for a panel called "Tumblr and the Future of Media." It was a poignant title considering that one of the topics discussed was Mr. Karp's recent, rather brusque blog post announcing the end of Storyboard, a high-profile editorial experiment that hired journalists to write features or film documentary video about Tumblr's community of "creators."

For example, this Storyboard piece about a photojournalist documenting a gang truce in El Salvador (on his Tumblr) was published by Mother Jones. One about activists and feminists using nail art (and the growing subculture on Tumblr) was produced in partnership with the Daily Beast.

“We decided it wasn't really the right tool in our tool box," a hoodied Mr. Karp told the conference goers gathered at the Time & Life building. "It was working in some regards. It wasn't working in the ways we intended."

That decision came as a surprise to Storyboard’s editorial staffers. “We were not warned that the department might be shut down,” Chris Mohney, Tumblr’s former editor-in-chief, said by email, in the first interview since he were laid off last week. As was previously reported, former executive editor Jessica Bennett got the bad news just before boarding a plane. Editorial producer Sky Dylan-Robbins declined to comment for this piece.

There was a similar lack of transparency regarding those unrealized intentions Mr. Karp mentioned at PaidContent. “We weren't given any more specifics about what we were doing wrong or right--or not doing at all--than David indicated either in the announcement or in his remarks at the conference,” Mr. Mohney said.

(In our recent report about the growing leadership vaccuum at Tumblr, one source cited Mr. Karp’s “wildly unpredictable and inconsistent” management style as a possible motivation for the executive departures, as well as Mr. Karp's tendency to play favorites.)

When Storyboard launched a year ago, its use of “almost retrograde feature journalism” to promote the Tumblr brand was closely watched by media insiders as a vanguard of a VC-approved way of making original reporting pay, like Facebook Stories, which followed that summer. Storyboard sounded like a more sophisticated version of branded content, which has rushed into the vacuum left by the waning media industry, blurring the line between advertising and editorial.

In Storyboard’s case, the mandate was to cover “Tumblr as if it were a digital city--the ideas, trends and culture coming out of it,” said Ms. Bennett. “I had no problem with that being deemed marketing as long as I was getting to produce the kind of rich, compelling content that I got into this business to do.”

But reporters considering working for brands or tech companies may want to take note. Tipping more towards journalism rather than branding might have been an issue for Storyboard.

“I sort of wonder whether part of the problem was that the content was actually too good,” Ms. Bennett conjectured. “Like, had we taken the simple ‘rah rah Tumblr’ approach, would we still be around? Who knows. But the reality is that we're journalists, not flaks. That's why Tumblr hired us in the first place!”

At the PaidContent conference, however, Mr. Karp seemed to insinuate a different reason for closing Storyboard: the fact that it picked favorites.

“We want to give you the stuff you’re going to love on Tumblr, but we don’t want to say what great stuff on Tumblr is. We don’t want to say what great content is, or these are our favorite blogs. We don’t wan [sic] to color it too much or scare anybody off.”

In response to those comments Mr. Mohney said, “It's worth noting that far more so than Storyboard, Tumblr's Spotlight and Radar have historically been about doing that exact thing. Of course, both those spaces are for sale, unlike Storyboard.”

Was Tumblr worried that Storyboard was encroaching on potential revenue opportunities? “Hah no. Storyboard was never a revenue thing, and never could have been with our resources,” Mr. Mohney said. “What I'm pointing out is that Tumblr has always promoted good content to users through Radar and the Spotlight, and now those two spaces are the things they are selling to advertisers. Make of that what you will.”

Like Ms. Bennett, Mr. Mohney is clearly proud of what Storyboard was able to accomplish, as well as its insistence "that the marketing mission could not compromise the the quality or tone of the editorial we published."

"If you want an example of how that dynamic can tilt toward PR and lose its ability to compel an audience, look no further than Facebook Stories--beautifully produced features that did just a little too much cheerleading for the patron platform, and so read as commercial," Mr. Mohney added. "The main unfortunate similarity between Facebook Stories and Tumblr Storyboard was that both were held at something of a nervous arms' length by their company, for what I suspect were totally different reasons."

Neither project, he explained, was acknowledged or promoted by the parent company. "I'd imagine the segment of Facebook users who knew about Facebook Stories was even smaller than the percentage of Tumblr users who knew about Storyboard," he said. Why Tumblr opted for that route, "only management knows for sure," he said.

Mr. Mohney also had some advice for anyone considering launching this kind of hybrid endeavor. "Make sure, from the start, that there is a clearly expressed purpose in line with the goals of the organization, and that there is sufficient buy-in from the people in charge to see it through to achieving that purpose. We thought we had done so internally--several times--but obviously not."

As for another remark Mr. Karp made during the PaidContent conference, calling profitability "not a metric that is particularly important to [Tumblr]" both Mr. Mohney and Ms. Bennett declined to comment.

After gushing with pride over Storyboard's many accolades, Mr. Karp pivoted, abruptly. The year-old concept "had run its course" and the editorial team, he announced, "will be closing up shop and moving on." Please, he asked, "join us in wishing them well."

But the Storyboard layoffs, which affected three staffers peripheral to internal operations, are hardly the only departures Tumblr has faced over the past six or seven months. Rather, they're the only ones Mr. Karp has spoken about publicly.

Sources close to the company, who requested anonymity, told Betabeat that a handful of high-level deputies have also quietly ended their tenure at Tumblr--leaving a noticeable absence around Mr. Karp where his leadership team should be.

"It’s like the fucking Argentinian government, people just get disappeared," said one source.

The most recent departure is Blake Matheny, Tumblr's VP of engineering, who gave notice in the past few weeks. Another source called it a "huge loss," adding, "Blake was the strongest tech leader there."

Fredrik Nylander, Tumblr's former executive vice president, gave notice last fall, we heard, but was asked to stick around by Mr. Karp, showing up at the office with less and less frequency. His LinkedIn profile states that he started as the CTO of Oscar, a New York City-based startup, this year. Mr. Nylander started as Tumblr's VP of technical operations back in 2011 and was promoted in less than a year to VP of engineering.

As EVP of Tumblr, Mr. Nylander replaced the role of former vice president Andrew McLaughlin, a veteran of Google, ICANN, and former deputy CTO for the Obama administration. Mr. McLaughlin lasted as VP at Tumblr for just nine months.

Marc LaFountain, Tumblr's former vice president of tech support, left in October, following his wife, an executive at R.J. Reynolds, to Switzerland. And last month, advertising veteran Rick Webb, who played a pivotal role consulting on the six-year old company's recent push toward profitability through advertising, announced that he too would be moving on after 10 months.

In the past, Tumblr has also lost lead developer Marco Arment, president John Maloney, and "vice president of people" Charlie Gray, an Xoogler who was with the company for only six months. So for tech leadership, that leaves Derek Gottfrid, VP of product, who may oversee some operations.

"We don't comment on staff moves, however all of the people you've referred to are very different circumstances spread out over months and not related at all to the closure of Storyboard," Tumblr spokesperson Katharine Barna said by email when she heard we were inquiring about the departures. She declined to comment further.

We reached out to each of the execs and will update the post when we hear back. But the sources we spoke with didn't attribute the recent shakeups to cost-cutting due to pressure from the board or even clearing the decks for Tumblr's rumored fundraising. Instead, they cited frustrations with Mr. Karp, who tends to marginalize deputies who disagree with him.

"Some people seem genuinely happy at Tumblr, but most are miserable, largely because Karp is wildly unpredictable and inconsistent," said one source. "Karp seems to treat Tumblr like a junior high lunch room--he sits with his five favorite people of the moment, and treats everyone else like a reject."

Mr. Karp has been encouraged to look for COO for Tumblr. Speculation says the role may go to former News Corp. chief digital officer and AOL CEO Jonathan Miller, who has been consulting for the company--one of the mentors Mr. Karp tends to collect. But Mr. Miller may still be hampered by "golden handcuffs" from his time at News Corp. Watchful observers don't have high hopes. "Even the COO search is a sham," said one source. "He’s not looking for Sheryl Sandberg, he’s looking to sideline that whole thing."

These staffing changes come at a critical time for Tumblr. Business Insider reported last week that Mr. Karp was in Silicon Valley "raising a big round of funding," even though it "doesn't need to raise more money." However, according to a profile in Forbes from January, Tumblr generated just $13 million in 2012, despite traffic of 18 billion page views per month. Forbes also noted that Tumblr shelled out an estimated $25 million in operations in 2012 and expects that figure to increase to $40 million in 2013. The company, which is headquarted in a cushy Flatiron clubhouse, last raised funding in 2011: $85 million at an $800 million valuation. Up until the end of 2012, Tumblr reportedly had a burn rate of $4 million to $5 million a month, before transitioning to its own data center, which lowered the burn rate to $2 million a month.

Given those financial concerns, some seem puzzled at the board's faith in Mr. Karp. "The fact that Tumblr is losing its most experienced people, at a moment when it wants people to believe it's succeeding in a big way, suggests some real incompetence on Karp's part," said a source.

The success Tumblr wants to project--as its Silicon Alley cohorts are trying to avoid down rounds--is related to the monetization strategy it launched for first time last year, which relies on native advertising via the Tumblr Dashboard, rather than traditional display or keyword ads. As head of sales Lee Brown told Bloomberg recently, brands pay for prominent placement of their posts, acting much like other users on the service:

“Marketers have become accustomed to buying scale as opposed to earning it,” Brown said. “We’re not really selling ads, we’re promoting their content.”

That approach has managed to attract big brands like Target, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Lions Gate, and Christian Dior, who average purchases of "just under six figures." Tumblr has begun offering the same service on its mobile app, which it says should lead the company toward since first annual profit since launching in 2007. But often the posts featured in the prominent Tumblr "Radar" spot on the dashboard come from regular users instead of brands, as evidenced by this unofficial archive.

One source was skeptical of the company’s emphasis on pageviews and number of blogs, given its advertising approach. "It has no strategy for monetizing anything other than logged-in dashboard users. Those numbers are much, much lower than what Tumblr's PR would suggest. So they're basically spending VC money to provide a free blogging platform, the vast majority of which can't be monetized."

Others disagreed with that assessment. "Monetizing the dashboard, actually, is the smart move. Why go and try and do deals with 100 million blogs, and share revenue, when you can just monetize the dash, which is bigger and you totally control?"

If Tumblr is indeed seeking another financing round, investors will no doubt be paying attention to its ability to monetize, as well as traffic itself. In November, Mr. Karp boasted that Tumblr had cracked Quantcast's list of top 10 U.S. websites. (It fact, Tumblr mistook the "top ten" badge on Quantcast as its website ranking. Instead, it had cracked no. 9 on Quantcast’s list of top networks and no. 15 on Quantcast’s list of top sites.)

Currently, Tumblr is ranked no. 21 in the top websites. A Quantcast graph shows that traffic appears to be plateauing, bolstered by an uptick in mobile users.

This story is developing, please email tips@betabeat.com with further information.

(Photo: Avc.com)

Last week, a tipster told Betabeat that Foursquare is working on a stand-alone app for discovery that would not require checking in. A handful of sources familiar with the company said a separate discovery app is not actively being developed, but revealed that Foursquare has kicked around the idea of stand-alone apps over the years.

"[The company] had talked in the past about Foursquare being 'read only' in the future as only a certain percentage of users will ever check in," said one source. "It jives with what I have seen out of them: deprioritizing power users in favor of scale."

Foursquare, which is rumored to be the midst of a raising a Series D round, has been "frustrated with lack of hype/momentum/growth," said another source. The culture at the company has switched from "uplifting" to "oh shit," the source added. In November, the Wall Street Journal reported that only 8 million of the company's 25 million registered members use the app at least once a month.

The ability to check-in and alert others to your location helped popularize Foursquare when it was launched in 2009. (There's a badge for that.) But the use case for the app has evolved over time. On the same day the company launched Foursquare 5.0, an entirely rebuilt version of the app, cofounder and CEO Dennis Crowley told TechCrunch:

"If anything we might have de-emphasized the check-in a little bit. Just because we’re starting to see that a lot of the people that are using the app are not even checking in. They use it for recommendations, to explore, they use it to look up tips for the restaurant they’re currently at, to see where their friends are. We’ve been seeing this in our data for the past couple months or so."

On his blog Friday, Fred Wilson also highlighted Foursquare's utility as a discovery and recommendations engine. "I was stunned," he said, by a new feature that he calls "places people go next." (Mr. Wilson's firm, Union Square Ventures, has participated in Foursquare's past three funding rounds, which totaled $71.4 million.)

In any case, this is the kind of thing you can do when you have a dataset of billions of checkins from tens of millions of people all over the world.

This echoes what Buzzfeed reported around the time of the version 5.0 launch:

But the new Foursquare is ultimately about something more profound than the check-in, a concept it practically defined. It's about something that no other social network does right now. It doesn't want to ask "what's on your mind?" It wants to say, "Here's where you're going."

Brendan Lewis, Foursquare's new director of communications, brushed off the notion that Foursquare was downplaying check-ins, but did acknowledge that people doesn't necessarily need to check in to use Foursquare. "Check-ins help power recommendations, but there are other things that go into it," he said. "For example, where your friends have been and what they've liked, where you have been in the past, and what 'new' places share those traits.  We also take into account weather (for example, if you lived in the East Village during Nemo and searched for 'pizza' we weren't going to send you to a place on the Upper West Side.)"

What's more, the company isn't just getting its data from Foursquare users. As TechCrunch recently argued, its API has become "a pillar of the mobile app ecosystem." The location function on Vine, Uber, and Foodspotting all use Foursquare. Even Instagram eschews Facebook's Places for Foursquare. CEO Dennis Crowley noted as much in response to a recent dig from Keith Rabois about the size of Foursquare's user base.

@sriramk @rabois @hunterwalk Keep hating... and while you're doing so Foursquare will keep becoming the location layer for the Internet.

— Dennis Crowley (@dens) March 16, 2013

"Whenever someone tags a location on a service that uses our API," Mr. Lewis explained, "we receive a signal that helps improve our service and recommendations. Those signals, combined with the contextual data around specific check-ins, helps power the recommendations in Explore."

All the bells and whistles of a discovery app, it seems, are already baked into Foursquare. Too bad that as an avid Foursquare user, I still have trouble convincing late adopter friends that it's about more than checking in.

UPDATE: Vulture's Lindsey Weber points out on Twitter that while Foursquare has all the juicy data on recommendations, the easiest way to access it is still by checking-in. In other words, the current version of the app doesn't privilege discovery. I've found the same to the true for planning ahead. I'd much prefer using Foursquare to Yelp to find a restaurant or bar in a particular neighborhood, but switching out of the current location mode can be unwieldy.

@idanisreal @nitashatiku this happened to me last night, so i am familiar. i just wanted the recs & had to work around so i didn't check in

— Lindsey Weber (@lindseyweber) April 9, 2013

(Photo: Instagram/Mazy)

At this point, it seems fair to say that celebrity-associated tech startups occupy their own stratum of Startupland. There's the celebrity-backed startup, benefitting from the digital ambitions of investors like Scooter Braun, Ashton Kutcher, and Lady Gaga. Then there's the celebrity "cofounded" company (see: half the startups in Los Angeles). There's even startups that help brands harness the buying power of, say, Team Breezy.

Coming soon: a celebrity-backed venture capital fund, with a hashtag in the title, of course.

Hipset falls into a slightly different niche: startups that help musicians make money off social media. (Media companies aren't the only ones eyeing potential Internet revenue streams with rabid interest.) The cofounders of Hipset, Mazy Kazerooni and Matt Schlicht, started out as college dropouts, working their into influential positions at UStream, where they met rappers like Wiz Khalifa and Lil Twist.

They left UStream and took their celeb connections with them to found Tracks.by, a Facebook app to help musicians get likes and manage their content that made its way into Y Combinator's summer 2012 class and picked up a number of high profile angel investors like Dave Morin, Lil Wayne's manager Cortez Bryant, Alexis Ohanian, Matt Mullenweg, and AngelList's Naval Ravikant, as well as Menlo Ventures.

But, like many third-party developers before them, Tracks.by was wiped out by the whims of Facebook, Mr. Schlicht told Betabeat, when Zuck eliminated the ability to set a default tab for fan pages.

Oh, welp, onto the next social network!

Today Tracks.by is officially relaunching as Hipset, a music site they began last summer, and debuting the Hipset Network, which offers a similar service as Tracks.by but for YouTube. It is also launching a service called Boost which, "will allow people to create social media campaigns where their fans have to follow them on Instagram (or like them on Facebook, Follow them on Twitter) before accessing exclusive content," said Mr. Schlicht.

Where popular YouTube personalities can generate consistent income from the site, celebrities haven't been as focused on monetizing it, he explained. They often have few subscribers on their YouTube channel, despite the fact that fans watch videos on the site. Hipset thinks they can change that by asking fans to subscribe to a YouTube channel or like the artist on various social networks before accessing content. To do this, the startup uses YouTube's ability to make a video unlisted. Musicians tweet or share a link to a Boost page with the YouTube video embedded. In theory, all those additional likes and views will help rake in advertising dollars or paid downloads.

"For them, it's found money," Mr. Schlicht said. "They’re not paying us a retainer, we get a percentage of the revenue that’s generated off YouTube." He declined to specify the exact amount: "I don't necessarily want to put the percentage out there."

To differentiate itself, Hipset is going beyond optimizing existing videos and helping its celebrity clientele to collaborate on new content with top YouTube personalities like Sam Betesh (Xjawz), who is apparently "one of the most popular people on YouTube with over 1 million subscribers and over 300 million views." Hipset is also training musicians to adapt to the milieu. "Artists don’t typically acknowledge that the camera is there, YouTube is a place where you should be acknowledging the camera" to talk to fans, Mr. Schlicht explained.

Like they say, Facebook's loss is YouTube's gain.

Say what? (Mr. Carey via www.123people.ca)

What's the best way to respond when a court ruling doesn't go in your favor? Public histrionics, judging by statements from News Corp. COO Chase Carey.

Last week, the Second Circuit appeals court upheld a decision denying broadcasters their motion for a preliminary injunction against Aereo, the Barry Diller-backed startup that lets users live-stream broadcast TV. The plaintiffs in the case are a cohort of powerful media companies, including NBC, CBS, Disney and, yes, News Corp, whose COO Chase Carey is not taking the decision lying down.

At an industry conference in Las Vegas today, Mr. Carey told audience members that he's considering switching Fox from a free, over-the-air broadcast station into a pay cable one if the courts won't protect his company, reports Variety.

“If we can’t have our rights properly protected through legal and governmental solutions, we will pursue business solution. One solution would be to take the network and make it a subscription service. We’re not going to sit idly by and let people steal our content.”

The rights in question are hefty "retransmission fees" for carrying networking programming. The plaintiffs argue Aereo needs to pay for the right to show their content, Aereo argues the individual antennas assigned to each user means its that its streaming service doesn't count as a "public broadcast."

How seriously should "New Girl" obsessives (will they/won't they, amiright?) take this threat? "You can probably file this under 'sword-rattling aimed at regulators' more than 'things Fox actually intends to do,'" says AllThingsD's Peter Kafka.

To back up that thesis, News Corp. already had a passionate press release plea to interested overseers drafted. The full text below:

STATEMENT FROM NEWS CORPORATION PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER CHASE CAREY REGARDING BROADCAST TELEVISION AND AEREO

NEW YORK, NY – April 8, 2013 – “News Corporation has a long-standing commitment to the broadcast television business, and to delivering the highest-quality entertainment, sports and news programming to our viewers on a localized basis.  We are committed to broadcasting under a business model where programmers receive fair compensation from parties that want to redistribute our product while continuing to make our product available for free to individual consumers that want to access our signal.

“We believe that Aereo is pirating our broadcast signal.  We will continue to aggressively pursue our rights in the courts, as well as pursue all relevant political avenues, and we believe we will prevail.

“That said, we won’t just sit idle and allow our content to be actively stolen. It is clear that the broadcast business needs a dual revenue stream from both ad and subscription to be viable. We simply cannot provide the type of quality sports, news, and entertainment content that we do from an ad supported only business model.  We have no choice but to develop business solutions that ensure we continue to remain in the driver’s seat of our own destiny.  One option could be converting the FOX broadcast network to a pay channel, which we would do in collaboration with both our content partners and affiliates.”

UPDATE: It looks like News Corp. isn't the only party given to grand pronouncements. Aereo spokesperson Virginia Lam emailed Betabeat the following statement, declaring that "Having a television antenna is every American's right.":

“Aereo has invented a simple, convenient way for consumers to utilize an antenna to access free-to-air broadcast television, bringing television access into the modern era for millions of consumers. It's disappointing to hear that Fox believes that consumers should not be permitted to use  an antenna to access free-to-air broadcast television. Over 50 million Americans today access television via an antenna. When broadcasters asked Congress for a free license to digitally broadcast on the public's airwaves, they did so with the promise that they would broadcast in the public interest and convenience, and that they would remain free-to-air. Having a television antenna is every American's right."

For more information about Aereo, check out our feature from last May. 

(Photo: vanityfair.com)

That Sergey Brin sighting amid the hedgerow at Vanity Fair's Oscar party must have gone to the glossy's head. Today, they attempted to catalog "Silicon Valley's Most Stylish."

Try as Jack Dorsey might with his "modified Mandarin collars," this is a crowd that once compared its colorful sock flair to boardroom "gang signs," so the bar was already low--especially considering that the New York Times already marked and tagged the every pair of Louboutins in the Bay Area.

But VF.com still managed to leave us aghast for one very troubling reason:

This photo of Marc Andreessen disrupting Dockers.

@samfbiddle dude looks like a real estate agent trying to sell me the house that he's standing in.

— Gary He (@garyhe) April 4, 2013

Well, slightly.

You'll still hear how many cities (420) and countries (66) and continents (6) are represented by the 1,700 companies that applied, along with the acceptance rate (0.6 percent), but the emphasis is on the “large market opportunities they are tackling."

That makes sense considering all those predictions that the accelerator bubble is about to burst (and advisements against joining one). The hot trend to emerge from Y Combinator's recent Demo Day, for instance, was trying to make money. 

In a blog post, Managing director Eugene Chung, who was named David Tisch's replacement in January, calls out categories beyond consumer Internet, including "the religion space." What Would Founder Jesus Do?:

"For the first time ever, we have a company tackling the religion space, an underserved yet massive market with incredible opportunities for disruption. Two of the things that Americans care most about are what they drive and what they eat, and we have companies revolutionizing both. The areas our founders are tackling are as varied as optimizing ecommerce to the world of pets. Our companies dream big, tackling the exciting new trends in cutting edge 3D to new ways of experiencing live shows to the quantifying of innovation for every company in the world."

We spotted at least a couple familiar names among the 11 companies selected. There's Plated, a sort of concierge Fresh Direct that lets users select a chef's recipe and then delivers all the ingredients so that all you have to do is cook. We've seen the startup get a shoutout in many a humblebragging Instagram. We also spotted Validation Board, a tool to help companies vet their ideas, which we covered last October.

Here are the rest:

AdYapper: Transparency and analytics to cut wasted ad spend.

Dash Labs: Connected car platform.

FaithStreet: Social outreach platform for faith communities.

Jukely: 2-tap concert concierge.

Klooff: Uniting pet lovers around the world.

Placemeter: Smart in-store sensors capturing customer data.

Sketchfab: Publish, share and embed interactive 3D models.

TriggerMail: Intelligent ecommerce emails.

weeSpring: Community for new parents built around the people they trust most.

If you’re looking to fact-check whether Lure Fishbar is indeed the “the Michael’s of downtown,” as one publicist recently told Betabeat, you could do worse than the Soho hangout’s Foursquare page. There, you’ll find tips from Reuters’s Felix Salmon, ex-Googler Caroline McCarthy and even defoundered Foursquare exec Naveen Selvadurai, who recommends Lure’s private side room for meetings—and the lobster tail.

“There’s some big heavy deals going on around here,” said executive chef Josh Capon, a burly guy with a gravely Rockland County accent and a fondness for using the phrase "I don't mean to disrespect myself," before doing just that.

“Every now and then," he continued, "I’m like, ‘Hey guys, can somebody please cut me in? Can I get a half a point on whatever deal you’re closing in my restaurant?’ They all kind of look at me and laugh, and I’m like, ‘No seriously, gimme a freaking half a point! What the hell is going on here?’”

We didn’t spot any term sheets on the table during a light lunch in Lure’s nautical-themed dining room last Friday, but we did count three self-effacing hoodies in the crowd.

Lure has long been a favorite of Gawker Media stalwarts, as well as Huffington Post cofounder Ken Lerer. "Ken sits over there and holds court," Mr. Capon said, gesturing to a booth in the back. "Ben [Lerer, cofounder of Thrillist] is always complaining that he can't get his dad's table." But over the past five or six years, the lunch crowd has come to reflect Soho office rentals, with plenty of startup types table-hopping amid the media mavens and hedge fund traders.

“The more I stuck around and the more I listened, I started to pick up on it,” he said of the tech jargon wafting about. “They get a kick out of me. Now they throw some words at me like, ‘Hey, Capon, you want in on the next IPO?’”

Last month, Mr. Capon, who also runs Burger & Barrel and El Toro Blanco, and his college buddy Jason King dipped a toe in the tech world themselves with a new venture called Dining Image. The startup helps restaurants create their own website, take reservations with OpenTable and manage email with clientele. Mr. King already runs a similar company, Studioality, which offers a high-end version of the same service for clients like David Burke, Keith McNally and Drew Nieporent. At $100 per month, however, Dining Image targets restaurateurs with more meager budgets.

Silicon Alley regulars will recall that Dining Image has some local competition, like SinglePlatform, Wiley Cerilli’s startup, which was acquired by the small business marketing corporation Constant Contact for $100 million last June. There is also the option of just launching a Tumblr, which is what Lure uses.

That was owner John McDonald’s decision, Mr. Capon said last Friday as we tucked into caviar-topped deviled eggs (he recommended using Lure’s homemade potato chips as a scooping vehicle). “To me, it’s not a restaurant website,” he said of the more blog-like approach, calling Tumblr “much more of a New York thing.” Mr. Capon should know. “I’ve been in this space 14 years!” he said incredulously. “Do you know chef years? That’s like dog years or tree years," he elaborated.

Mr. King told Betabeat that he used Chef Capon as a beta tester during the yearlong development process for Dining Image. He wanted to offer the bells and whistles of Studioality but in a more manageable interface. “We understand that chefs are working in the back of the kitchen on a computer that is probably running IE 7 and they’re not really up to date with all the technology.”

In fact, Dining Image’s promotional video, which features a guest appearance from TV personality and top chef John Besh, depicts Mr. Capon building a website in the time it takes him to eat a Lure burger. “It shows me, no disrepect to myself, as a mooky chef,” he said.

What does mooky mean, we asked, unfamiliar with the term. “Meaning I’m not a tech-world guy,” Mr. Capon said with a laugh. “I’m not the sharpest stone in the shed or whatever they say. I failed accounting twice in Maryland, but I made my way to culinary school and I do very well for myself. Jason [King] watches me type sometimes on my computer and he’s like, ‘Are you serious?’ I’m like, ‘Listen, I get it done, guy. You want a nice dinner? I can make you a really nice dinner.’”

“We all have our strengths and weaknesses,” he added before settling on a one-word definition for mooky: “Caveman-esque.”

A version of this story was published in the April 3, 2013 edition of The New York Observer.

Mr. Porter and Ghostface Killah (Photo: Twitter)

Dan Porter, the former CEO of New York-based gaming company OMGPOP which was purchased by Zynga in March of last year, has left the company, according to a release obtained by Betabeat.

Zynga confirmed to Betabeat that the decision was mutual and unrelated to the expiration of any “golden handcuff” clause in his contract keeping him at the company after the acquisition. Mr. Porter had been working on developing the sequel to Draw Something for the past year and felt it was in good enough shape to make the transition. Zynga launched Draw Something 2 in Sweden last week. The company picked Sweden to release the sequel--a celebrity-focused social network of sorts that emphasizes showcasing drawings over gaming--because Sweden was the first country where the first version hit no. 1 in the App Store.

"Developing and launching games is a team effort, and we’re proud of the great work the Zynga New York team has done with Draw Something 2," Zynga COO David Ko said. "We thank Dan Porter for his efforts in making the Draw Something franchise a success and wish him well in his future endeavors."

Until today, Mr. Porter served as the VP of general management at Zynga's New York office. He'll be replaced by VP of Mobile Sean Uberoi Kelly. This past December, CEO Mark Pincus was named the fourth worst CEO in part because of "a big exodus of top executive talent," as well as the $95.5 million write-down on its acquisition of OMGPOP.

Mr. Porter’s independent streak has bristled against Zynga’s corporate policies in the past. His public criticisms, such as calling Zynga out for copying competitors, have on occasion warranted a retraction. Zynga HQ’s willingness to blame poor performances on the OMGPOP write-down and dwindling engagement with the game likely didn’t help.

But Zynga New York has been on a hot streak of late, as we reported last week. What’s the Phrase--a new game from the New York office that borrows from “Wheel of Fortune” the same way Words with Friends borrows from Scrabble--hit no. 1 in Apple’s App Store without much promotion. It's currently no. 6 in top free apps overall and no. 4 in top free games.

On March 21st, Mr. Porter tweeted “One year,” indicating the one-year anniversary of his time at Zynga.

https://twitter.com/tfadp/status/314841925268172800

This is a breaking story. We have reached out to Mr. Porter and will update the post when we hear back. 

IAC chairman Barry Diller. (David Shankbone)

Aereo, the New York City-based service that lets cordcutters live-stream network TV online, has been making broadcasters feel litigious ever since IAC led a $20.5 million Series A in the startup last February. The group of 17 broadcasters suing Aereo argue that the individual antennas Aereo assigns each user are an illegal loophole to avoid paying networks costly retransmission rights--and that Aereo is guilty of copyright violation of their content.

This January, Aereo raised $38 million more, which should help cover its considerable legal fees. But the TV incumbents haven't found much support in the courts.

Today, the Second Circuit appeals court ruled in favor of Aereo, denying broadcasters their request for a preliminary injunction and upholding the decision made Federal District Court last summer. That vote of support is well-timed to Aereo's recent major marketing push--expanding service 29 new counties across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

CEO and founder Chet Kanojia got the inspiration for Aereo by looking at the 2009 Supreme Court case, which ruled that Cablevision was within its rights to move its DVR systems to the cloud. The court of appeals referenced that decision in their ruling today:

 “We conclude that Aereo’s transmissions of unique copies of broadcast television programs created at its users’ requests and transmitted while the programs are still airing on broadcast television are not ‘public performances’ of the Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works under Cablevision. As such, Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that they are likely to prevail on the merits on this claim in their copyright infringement action. Nor have they demonstrated serious questions as to the merits and a balance of hardships that tips decidedly in their favor. We therefore affirm the order of the district court denying the Plaintiffs’ motion.”

But as AllThingsD notes, today's decision just means that Aereo can continue operating while the trial is underway, it's not a legal all-clear.

It is worth noting the dissenting opinion from District Court Judge Denny Chin, who doesn’t buy the Cablevision argument at all: “The system is a Rube Goldberg-like
contrivance, over-engineered in an attempt to avoid the reach of the Copyright Act and to take advantage of a perceived loophole in the law.”

Sounds like someone in chambers has a Google Reader full of tech blogs!