Never Leave Your Apartment Again: Seamless and GrubHub Are Merging
Rumor Roundup: Betabeat Becomes a Bunch of Glassholes, Prince Harry Hails a Hailo and Zuck Celebrates a Bday
NYC Judge Rules Airbnb Stay Illegal, Fines Host $2,400
Temporary apartment renting service Airbnb has had its share of tussles with New York law. In 2011, the city instituted an illegal hotels statute that makes it illegal for users to rent out their apartments for less than 29 days, effectively rendering Airbnb hosts subject to fines. Last September, the city council jacked up the fines that could be levied upon illegal hoteliers advertising their wares through Airbnb from $800 to $2,500. Read More
Booting Up: Everybody’s Got an Opinion About the Tumblr-Yahoo Deal
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]
Yahoo! Opening New Office in Times Square, Wants to Expand NYC Presence by 60 Percent
Yahoo! is taking over New York, whether you like it or not. After the long-awaited announcement that the old school web giant had purchased Alley darling Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion, the company held a press event in Times Square to make another big declaration: Yahoo! will be consolidating its local offices into a giant hub in the old New York Times building. It’s no Googleplex, but it’ll do. Read More
Where My Dogs At? Not Caring About This New Pet App Because Dogs Can’t Use Smartphones
Dogs, creatures that lack opposable thumbs and thus the ability to read or operate any device, now have a social network–sort of. Where My Dogs At, a new, grammatically incorrect app, that locates nearby dog-friendly locales and rates them with user reviews. Think Yelp for animals that make that noise a lot. Read More
11 Internet Week Events You Don’t Wanna Miss!
This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.
Get ready for some boozing ‘n schmoozing, people! Its that time of the year again. That’s right. Internet Week, a week-long festival celebrating all things Internet (business + culture + media + tech) is back in New York City!
It’s our very own version of South by South West, and with over 45,000 folks expected to attend almost 400 events around town, it’s safe to say things are gonna get a little crazy. There’s tons of awesome events, but to make your life easier, here’s my selection of 11 that you really, positively, absolutely shouldn’t miss! (You’re welcome.) Read More
Activist Group Whines to the FTC For You About Snapchat’s Not-So-Deleted Photos
Remember that nearly life-ending revelation that the photos sent from Android devices on Snapchat don’t disappear? As in, they sit in some not-so-discreet folder called “RECEIVED_IMAGES_SNAPS,” where they’re just waiting to be shown to the world. Well, a privacy watchdog is taking action for you by filing a complaint with the government in an effort to stop the nuisance.
On Friday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. The 8-page document lambastes the California-based app for its “deceptive business practices,” since it claims the photos are deleted when in many cases they are not. In Snapchat’s privacy statement, it does hedge that it “cannot guarantee that the message contents will be deleted in every case.” Read More
World Nutella Day Cancelled After Nutella Owner Ferrero Sends Cease & Desist
Each year on February 5th, lovers of the crack-laced hazelnut spread Nutella gather to create delicious recipes and spoon-feed each other scoops directly from the jar in celebration of World Nutella Day. But it appears that this year’s festivities may have been the last. Read More
Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!
Best Tech Events This Week (Internet Week, Webutante Ball, OpenCo, New York Times Job Fair, Webby Awards, NYU ITP)
This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.
You know what’s cool? A billion dollars, that’s what! Huge congrats to David Karp and the folks at Tumblr. Billion-dollar exits form the cornerstone of a thriving tech ecosystem, and this is great news for New York tech.
It’s finally here! Internet Week, that is. 45,000 people are expected to attend over 400 parties with keynotes by Randi Zuckerberg, Jonah Peretti (BuzzFeed), Joe Gebbia (Airbnb) and Joan Rivers!
The hottest party during Internet Week? That would, of course, be the Webutante Ball (a.k.a. the REAL #nerdprom!) And lucky for you, I have two FREE passes to give away. Interested? Of course you are! Apply here. Read More
