(Photo: Facebook)

Today, in dispatches from the Facebook Mafia: Chris Hughes' hubs Sean Eldridge is the subject of a front-page story in the Poughkeepsie Journal. The focus is his work with Hudson Valley Ventures, the investment firm focused on the region where the pair own a home (their third) and Mr. Eldridge reportedly plans to run for Congress in 2014.

Since the firm was founded in 2011, the Journal reports, Mr. Eldridge has doled out money to five local businesses, most of them foodie projects like Poughkeepsie's Hudson Chocolates and Ulster County's Bread Alone. (“I love food,” Mr. Eldridge confessed to the Journal.)

Investments range from $50,000 to $500,000. But don't ask for financial details, because all Mr. Eldridge seems willing to say is that it's none of your beeswax:

The money behind Hudson River Ventures, Eldridge said, is not publicly disclosed because the fund is a “closed fund,” meaning its investors are private and so are its fiscal matters.

The money is “my own and my husband’s,” Eldridge said. “Because it’s a closed fund, we’re able to be quite agile.”

Yes, we hear that "agility" is one of the great benefits of enormous personal wealth. That, and the ability to maintain three homes.

David Einhorn, whose hedge fund Greenlight Capital has a large stake in Apple, took to the airwaves yesterday and touted a plan in which the iPhone maker would issue preferred shares as a means of returning cash to investors and boosting the share price: "Steve is not with us anymore, and that is negative in many ways, but it is positive because Apple doesn't have to be committed to that way of thinking at this point in time." [Bloomberg Television]

LinkedIn beat Wall Street expectations when it announced quarterly earnings yesterday, and anticipated future revenue growth tied to raising the rates it charges customers for professional services. [BusinessInsider]

Venture capitalists are going further and further to build their brands these days, but that doesn't mean entrepreneurs should believe the hype. Ask First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman, who dressed up as a certain YouTube sensation for his firm's holiday video: "I know many super-angels who have gotten a lot of press. Some of them aren’t so super, and some of them are not very angelic." [PandoDaily]

Chris Hughes had enough influence in Washington to score an interview with President Barack Obama for the relaunch of The New Republic. The Facebook cofounder could soon have even more pull: His husband, Sean Eldridge, is running for Congress in an upstate New York district. [Mashable]

For a couple million bucks, the NFL could have rented a few bus-sized diesel generators and accompanying equipment and avoided the Super Bowl blackout. [Wired]

Mr. McClure

#RealTalk Dave McClure, our favorite giver of zero fucks, went on a bit of a Twitter tear the other day. It started with the admission that he'd "just had really hard tough love talk w/ startup founder. fucking sucks, but better harsh truth than bullshit 'you'll make it work' lies." He didn't stop there, adding that "what really sucks is none of other investors (incl big lead VC) have the balls 2 tell them its not going 2 fucking work & shut it down."

He concluded: "the Silicon Valley story is indeed the 1% story of Instagram $1B win, but also 99% broken dreams, shattered hopes & try, try again. sigh."

Okay, 'fess up: Who's the startup? Tips@betabeat.com if you wanna talk.

Not So Super Today, in unlikely historical connections: Wired reports that the decades-long legal battle over the ownership of Superman has been resolved... using the precedent set by the conclusion of Winklevoss vs. Facebook. To simplify a byzantine copyright nightmare: In 1938, the creators of Superman sold the rights for a mere $130. For decades, Jerry Siegel’s heirs have been attempting to rectify the move. In the latest chapter of the saga, they argued that an agreement reached in 2001 wasn’t finalized, meaning that the Siegel heirs could press for more rights and more money. Lots and lots of money. It also presented a potential legal problem for the studio with Man of Steel, which is scheduled to hit screens this summer.

In 2008, the courts sided with the Siegels. That’s been overturned, though, thanks in part to a ruling against the Winklevosses claim that an earlier settlement with Facebook hadn’t actually been binding. Warner Bros. now has the rights to make the movies free and clear--and without having to hand over more moola to Siegel's heirs. Hope the Winklevii and Mark Zuckerberg are proud of themselves for this.

It Ain’t Me, Babe Last year’s coverage of the booth babes of CES took a more circumspect, critical view. “That Mad Men bullshit doesn't represent who we are as an industry anymore, and it certainly doesn't represent what we should aspire to become. Technology is about the future, and this attitude is from the past,” Mat Honan wrote over at Gizmodo.

But Business Insider went back to business as usual this week with its slideshow ogling the antiquated, alienating marketing tactic.

glad we've moved past meta booth babe coverage and circled back to unironic booth babe galleries

— matt buchanan (@mattbuchanan) January 10, 2013

That wasn’t the only sexism on display. Skillcrush, the tech literacy startup, took a stab at “unpacking male tech privilege,” starting with the backlash that followed a petition to get more women on conference panels.

Indeed, blockbuster tech shows tend to surface all manner of moral quandaries, apparently, such as what happened when CNET's corporate owners intercede in news coverage to their own advantage. It was enough make Sam Biddle go straight quid pro quo.

(GIF HAT TIP: @jwherrman)

Viva Las Vegas Maybe the Buzzfeed editorial team skipped CES, but that doesn't mean head honcho Jonah Peretti missed a chance to visit Sin City. Photographic evidence comes from the unlikeliest of sources: Namely News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch, who tweeted that "At CES getting many brilliant presentations. So far most fun Buzzfeed."

We'd almost be afraid to hear what secrets were discussed. Our faces might melt off, like in Raiders of the Last Ark.

WTF Consider the charmed life of Kevin Rose. Sure, Digg crashed and burned (only to be resurrected by Betaworks once it was out of his hands), but Mr. Rose landed on his feet. He's now a venture partner at Google who spends his time Instagramming things like his Hawaii vacation and also this:

The caption: "Hanging with Tim Ferriss, yes this is normal."

Here's what we'd like to know: What was Mr. Rose wearing to the party? Was this, by chance, a furry party?

Open the door and influenza Could someone check on Chris Hughes? You might find him huddled in a corner at the New Republic between two bookshelves overflowing with pamphlets from the 1950s, clutching a giant bottle of hand sanitizer. Earlier this week he tweeted a link to a New York Times piece (with an xpost to Facebook) and commented that "Flu, stomach viruses, and whooping cough are at record levels this season. Reminder: wash hands compulsively."

Okay actually now we're terrified too. If you need us, we'll be looking for Mr. Hughes' Tamiflu stockpile.

Mr. Hughes. (photo via flickr.com/dsearls)

New York has just published a lengthy profile of Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes, and it confirms what we've long suspected: This young man has the chutzpah of a well-capitalized comp lit major. After serving as PR interlocutor for Zuck and helping Barack Obama on his path to the presidency, Mr. Hughes is now plowing that Facebook fortune into the ailing New Republic.

But New York suggests that before he settled on his current property, the most literary of the Facebook mafiosos asked around about a different outlet. Buried in the profile is this tiny tidbit:

For Hughes, the advantage of trying to fix journalism by fixing The New Republic is that, in addition to its good breeding, it’s always been small and will remain small: He wasn’t taking the helm of a grand, listing superliner like, say, Newsweek. (Though, a source says, he did ask around first about buying The New York Review of Books, which isn’t for sale and is, actually, profitable.)

Oh, the hubris of the Harvard-educated. "May I rescue your weekly?" "No, thank you, we're doing just fine!" But if the choice for newly-minted millionaires is shopping for super yachts or venerable literary outlets, we'd chose the latter too.

And now that he owns the New Republic, guess what he wants to turn it into? "He was going to re-create the magazine as something like The New York Review of Books meets The Economist, he told these people."

But despite any discreet inquiries Mr. Hughes might have made, there doesn't seem to be any weirdness, judging by this bit of scene setting from the New York Times' profile of Mr. Hughes, from back in May:

The evening was his debut in New York’s clubby literary society. Robert Silvers, the longtime editor of The New York Review of Books being honored that night, offered Mr. Hughes a warm hello.

Can't hurt to keep the old lines of communication open--especially not with ominous clouds brewing on the horizon.

After six months, news aggregator Upworthy has proven that viral videos work as a conduit for politically-relevant information just as well as, say, cats or Carly Rae Jepsen. The Chris Hughes-backed site, which describes itself as "social media with a mission," picked up an impressive six million uniques in September according to Google Analytics, up from just over 4 million in August.

To help catapult that growth, the company has raised $4 million from the venture capital firm NEA, as well as a host of familiar angel investors, including Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian and BuzzFeed cofounder John Johnson. Mr. Hughes, who is also fighting the good fight as owner of the The New Republic, reupped, participating in this round as well, the company confirmed. The pedigree of the site's cofounders reflect Upworthy's tone: Eli Pariser is the former executive director of MoveOn and Peter Koechley is former managing editor of The Onion.

Impressively, most of the growth has been organic. In a press release, the company said, "After just about 6 months in business, our core audience has grown to a community of more than 425,000 Facebook fans and more than 265,000 daily email subscribers. We’re now branching out into other social networks, garnering more than 33,000 Twitter followers and 7,000 Tumblr followers in the last few weeks."

It probably helps that the types of content they specialize in aren't the video equivalent of vegetables. Some of it, like the site's biggest hits, "Bully Calls News Anchor Fat, News Anchor Destroys Him On Live TV" and "Mitt Romney Accidentally Confronts A Gay Veteran; Awesomeness Ensues," are entertaining and attention-grabbing on their own. In fact, its sweet spot seems to be eliciting a stick-it-to-man (or bigot or ignoramus) swell of schadenfreude that comes from watching disenfranchised people speak up for their rights.

After all, who doesn't like the underdog?

Upworthy's growth via Google Analytics

The mission, distilled. (Photo: Upworthy.com)

Bad news for the liberally inclined and easily distracted: Today the New York Times offers an inside look at the latest startup looking to disrupt your workday with viral content. Upworthy (which launched in late March) is a high-minded new aggregator designed to share content that is meaningful and important, rather than merely hilarious or WTF-inspiring.

Tl;dr: It's Buzzfeed, but founded by MoveOn alums.

Founders Eli Pariser (formerly executive director of MoveOn.org) and Peter Koechley (formerly The Onion's managing editor), the site was built on the observation that most stuff on the Internet is all sugar, no bran. Mr. Pariser told the Times, “We want to give people the information and tools that help make them better, more aware citizens."

That sounds awfully AP Government for the Internet's interests, but the site's cheeky explainer is a little more promising in terms of entertainment value. It features cats and concludes with a blast-from-past note proclaiming, "This is a chain letter. Share it with at least 500 friends right now or someone somewhere will get a horrible disease. (True fact.)"

So instead of skateboarding dogs, think Nicki Minaj systematically demolishing the double standard, all while wearing a magnificent pink beehive perched on her head.

And wait, what's that--do we see signs of the Facebook mafia stirring? The startup is backed by newly wedded Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes, who apparently decided that he didn't have quite enough on his plate merely reinvigorating The New Republic (which he now owns and edits) and being a Democratic mover and shaker. He explained his interest to the Times:

“People in the media business often think they have to choose between mass appeal and substance,” Mr. Hughes said in an e-mail. “What I love about Upworthy — and what excites me about the significant traction they’re getting — is the plan to do both at the same time. Eli and Peter have an instinctive sense of what drives people to share on the Internet.”

Let's just hope Upworthy fares a little better traction-wise than Mr. Hughes' ill-fated socially inclined social network, Jumo.

Also, wait a minute--isn't this man still on his honeymoon? Take a day off, Mr. Hughes! Even the single-minded Zuck devoted at least a week to undertipping his way across Italy.

Morning, sunshine! (Photo: tommypom.tumblr.com)

Apparently not content to let Google and Apple have all the fun doling out directions, Amazon has acquired UpNext, its very own mapping startup. [GigaOm]

The makers in Silicon Valley are getting a patent office. Just remember: Don't feed the trolls. [Bloomberg]

Google decided to make the Nexus Q in America because it cares about fast, not cheap. [Reuters]

GM might come back to Facebook, but the social network'll have to work for it. [Wall Street Journal]

Facebook has brand-new timeline icons for same-sex newlyweds. One of the first users? Cofounder Chris Hughes, of course. [CNET]

Microsoft lost $6.2 billion on its digital advertising bet, aQuantive. We'd say losing that much money deserves some sort of prize, but then J.P. Morgan would've already collected it. [DealBook]

The Times tells us that the pair were wedded yesterday, at their home--excuse us, their "estate"-- in Garrison, New York. The announcement recounts their meeting:

The couple met in November 2005 through a college acquaintance of Mr. Eldridge’s at a brunch in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass. Mr. Eldridge was working as a customer service manager for a moving company in Somerville, Mass., and Mr. Hughes was a senior at Harvard, and already a founder of Facebook.

“He was very intelligent and charismatic,” Mr. Hughes said of Mr. Eldridge. “He was very kind and politically engaged, and he cared about the world around us. All of that was very attractive to me.”

Aw, it's almost enough to make us forget we find the Vows section even more agonizing than the Modern Love column!

A source tells Betabeat that while the wedding itself was intimate, at around 75 people, the party was a blowout, with something like 400 guests. Mark Zuckerberg attended, as did fellow Facebook cofounder Andrew McCollum and his wife Gretchen Sisson. Misters Hughes and Eldridge are quite connected in the city's Democratic circles, which probably explains what Nancy Pelosi was doing at the party, getting down to "All The Single Ladies."

Arianna Huffington put in an appearance at the couple's wedding dinner at Cipriani--and couldn't resist tweeting out a photo of herself with fellow guest Senator Charles Schumer. Senator Chris Coons likewise attended, betraying an endearing sentimental streak (or maybe just a sweet tooth) by tweeting out a picture of the wedding cake.

Mr. Hughes may be busy recruiting for The New Republic in his new role as media mogul. But there were plenty of friends from the tech world in attendance as well. LocalResponse founder Nihal Mehta and his wife Reshma Saujani were both there and tweeting their congratulations--no great surprise given Mr. Hughes' support for Ms. Saujani's 2010 Congressional campaign. Ms. Saujani is the founder of Girls Who Code; the program's executive director Kristen Titus was also among the guests. We heard that Eli Pariser and Peter Koechley of Upworthy (which aims to "make important content shareable") were in attendance as well, and that Olivia Ma of YouTube did a reading.

Alberto Ibarguen, head of the Knight Foundation, and Ivanka Trump also attended. (Ms. Trump is married to Jared Kushner, head of the Observer Media Group, which owns Betabeat.)

Of course, Mr. Hughes' nuptials follow hard on the heels of those of both Mark Zuckerberg's surprise wedding and Andrew McCollum's seaside affair. Starting to reconsider that bachelor lifestyle, Eduardo? Inquiring minds want to know.

With contributing reporting from Nitasha Tiku.

(Flickr: unionsquareventures)

Back in August, Fast Company reported that Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes had sold his startup Jumo, a social network to connect people to nonprofits, to GOOD, the magazine publisher and digital media platform, for undisclosed terms.

Betabeat reported the terms were for $0 and a graceful exit.

Our story said Mr. Hughes's company was a flop, and that the sale was more of a face-saving effort than a true acquisition. "Rather than folding the grant-funded, well-meaning and inordinately high-profile startup and admitting what would surely be a very public failure, he arranged a deal with an old friend," we wrote at the time. Ben Goldhirsh, who went to boarding school with Mr. Hughes, is the CEO and owner of GOOD.

Betabeat has now obtained documents pertaining to the sale, which confirm every bit of our theory, except one. At the time, Mr. Hughes insisted the sale price was not $0, and he was right: The sale had not yet been approved by the state attorney general, a requirement because of its nonprofit status.

The sale was approved and the approval was filed in the Supreme Court of New York on December 30, 2011.

Jumo, a nonprofit corporation which raised more than $3.5 million in grant money from the Ford Foundation, the Omidyar Network and the Knight Foundation., among others, was not sold for $0. It was sold for $62,221, based on an appraisal of Jumo's value by Morrison, Brown, Argiz and Farra.

Time and the documents have shown that public statements made by Mr. Goldhirsh and Mr. Hughes were disingenuous. The "Jumo team will be fully integrated into the GOOD ecosystem" or that Mr. Hughes would be working on "Jumo’s next act... will appear under the GOOD imprimatur in some form this November or December" have both proved false. We could find only one employee who had been hired at GOOD after Jumo: Jen Chiou, Jumo's former outreach director. Ms. Chiou is now general manager at GOOD Worldwide, LLC; other Jumo employees went to Tumblr, Artsy, BlackBook Media and other places. Jumo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Additional fun fact: Jumo paid pretty well! Ms. Chiou made $95,000, the CTO made $150,000, and the engineers made between $107,500 and $135,000; Mr. Hughes, as executive director, took a $1 salary.)

Furthermore, while Mr. Hughes was supposedly slated to be a senior advisor to GOOD, we heard nothing about it after the announcement. The Facebook cofounder, whose second act included working on digital strategy for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, has gone on to join the Knight Foundation board, some kind of agency for the viral spread of progressive ideas with MoveOn veterans, and, most recently, take over as publisher and editor-in-chief of The New Republic.

Here is what GOOD did get from Jumo:

(a) 1-year exclusive license to use the Corporation's trademarks, copyrights, and brand likeness and the goodwill of the business associated therewith;
(b) a minimum of 10 registered users communications;
(c) a secure API endpoint for the retrieval of the Jumo profile and social graph information based on an email address (personal information to be transferred only if the user opts in to the transfer pursuant to the process described in paragraphs 11 and 12 below); and
(d) facilitation of Purchaser's recruitment of Seller employees.

Jumo also agreed to hand over five MacBook Pros, according to documents.

According to the document, which was filed in December, Jumo was also working to return approximately $488,944 in unused grant funds to The Ford Foundation, Knight Foundation, Omidyar Network, Pershing Square Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation, in accordance with written grant agreements. No debt was transferred in the "sale," but GOOD didn't even get Jumo's domain name or its two patents.

The document filed with the New York Supreme Court:

Jumo - Leave to Sell Assets

Ben Weitzenkorn contributed reporting.