JackThreads Gets an iPads App

SoundCloud Drifts to NY The orange-and-white audio platform announced the opening of offices in New York this week, declaring that they find the city "similar to Berlin" in that it’s "not trying to replicate what’s going on in The Valley." SoundCloud has also taken on Dan Gerber, the former National Director of Strategic Partnerships at Pandora, in order to look after brand revenues following his work at The Grammys. No word if he’ll organize Taylor Swift-style digs at rivals Spotify and Songza.

Aereo Reveals New Pricing Structure Controversial live TV streaming company Aereo unveiled a new payment plan for customers that allows access to most features for as little as $8 an hour. The purveyors of tiny antennas said the pricing plan "requires no long-term commitment and eliminates the previous annual and day plans," referring to it as "streamlined." The move is accompanied by a commitment to offer full service amenities free for the first month commencing May 15. Aereo's CEO stated that, "We looked at our data and it was clear, consumers want a more simple approach to pricing," mentioning nothing about undercutting the network giants they’ve so angered.

SideTour Adds BlackJack Wiz Experience maestros SideTour let slip that one of their own employees, a veteran card counter and Blackjack player, has started offering tours of his own. The staff member, Brian Cotlove, "spent six years making a career playing blackjack in casinos around the world." Perhaps a trip to Atlantic City is in order for the SideTour team?

BitPay Expands The BitCoin world’s PayPal has grown with the inclusion of Bitcoin core-developer Jeff Garzik and CFO Bryan Krohn. As BitCoin prepares to be used in up to 50,000 stores, the payment site says that Mr. Garzik’s new position will "allow him to work full-time on Bitcoin, BitPay, and related open-source projects to benefit the Bitcoin community."

Fiverr Hires Former Cuban Council Co-Founder Following the buzz around Google’s acquisition of legendary design firm Cuban Council, it can now be revealed that co-founder Michael Schmidt has made the move to Fiverr, the online services marketplace. Schmidt, who was responsible for Evernote, Bad Religion and the Rdio app, amongst other things, will now be their new front end architect, building and managing the Fiverr design team.

Pheed Launches Android App Feisty young social media upstart Pheed, used by the likes of Miley Cyrus, continues to vie for the big leagues with the launch of an Android app. The site, which is essentially a mashup of every other social media, believes it will "double in size over the next couple of months due to the new Android market," according to CEO O.D. Kobo.

Mr. Costolo (Photo: About.me)

Last week, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo reportedly quit as director of the company's U.K. arm. The news comes just days after government regulators forced TweetDeck to dissolve following accounting issues. [Sky News]

Bloomberg is apologizing to its clients after allegations that reporters snooped on client terminals to see their Seamless orders or whatever. [CNN Money]

JackThreads' recent push into international waters, like Australia and the U.K., is doing well for the company's bottom line as sales overseas now make up 10 percent of its business. [AllThingsD]

Facebook Home is missing features that Android users love (widgets, docks, oh my!) because all of the developers use iPhones. The lack of "droidfooding" is causing them to scramble to add those features to turn around Home's slow downloads. [TechCrunch]

Here's a groovy map that shows you where in the world Wikipedia is being edited right now. [Ars Technica]

Elon Musk and David Sacks have left Mark Zuckerberg's political action group over growing concerns over the support of certain politicians. [AllThingsD]

If there were a word cloud for recent ecommerce reports, it would be shaped like a mushroom cloud with "over-hyped" "implosion," "froth," "down rounds," and "suck it, America, Europe does it better," all in extra large font.

So we weren't expecting to hear that JackThreads, the men's ecommerce site acquired by Thrillist in 2010, had its best revenue month ever in February, even bigger than typically high-selling holiday months. Growth in new members was up 366 percent year-over-year and double the growth in number of new users joining in November and December of 2012.

The company also boasted the highest number of app downloads in February. Mobile revenues were triple from November, with sales from the app counting for 40 percent of JackThreads February revenue. But the most important metric--as that imaginary word cloud can attest--was the fact that JackThreads did it while maintaining its highest gross margin month ever as well.

"I can feel the heat," heat-seeking CEO Ben Lerer told us by phone, "Frankly, for a company that's seven years old, it's a little unexpected." Mr. Lerer raised a $13 million Series A last year (after growing Thrillist to 150 people on just $1.7 million). He attributed the surprising success to a number of little tweaks and improvements, rather than one magic bullet.

"You figure out make a bet and you win one, you lose one. But they all harmonically came together," he said, adding, "I don’t know if that’s English." Improvements were made on the website (adding a search function and boosting speed) as well as in mobile development, SEO, speed of order fulfillment, greeting customers the right merchandise when they arrive on the site, better photography, and buying deeper into certain categories.

One popular item seen around the upwardly mobile men of Soho? A seasonally appropriate "ninja hoodie." Rebrand it as a snuggie for your neck and Betabeat might consider throwing down for a few.

Of course, if there's any niche that's getting beat up worse than ecommerce, it's digital media, i.e. the Thrillist side of Mr. Lerer's business. But he brushed off concerns that Jackthreads gains means that he'll eventually be running an ecommerce company, rather than a "media group."

"The lifetime value of a user," he said, "is monetized through both media and ecommerce. Ultimately, it's going to mean a larger audience for our advertisers to reach as well, but that doesn’t work in real time." They're sure trying. Register for JackThreads and you'll get a pop-up noting the city you're in and wondering if you'd like to sign up for relevant recommendations from Thrillist.

We asked the ever-amiable Mr. Lerer why he thought there was so much skepticism about ecommerce recently. "There has been a tendency online for ecommerce companies to buy revenue," he replied. Companies like Gilt Groupe and Fab.com, he said, have spent a lot on marketing. The idea is, "I can make no money on my users, but they can buy a whole lot of stuff from me," he said, noting, "You don’t raise $150 million to put it in the bank. You raise it to spend it." Only after they scale does the focus turn to making money. "Gilt is an example of that. I think Gilt will pull it off, but not without some pain to get there. And Fab is on a similar trajectory."

Mr. Lerer opted against that route. "Maybe we were wusses," to try growing a more comfortable clip rather than aim to be an industry leader, he said, but, "our margins feel a lot more like businesses that are private label than companies that are also selling large quanitifes of third party goods." Despite unintentional misses, like early foibles running a shipping promotion without understanding how it might impact margin, "We don’t give the store away."

JackThreads has evolved over the years from its target 18-to-24-year-old demo, he said, and been able to sell at a higher price point, incorporating more athletic brands and tailored items. "Our users are a little bit less price sensitive and a lot more focused on curation and brand discovery," he said. "If you’re gonna be known for being super cheap, you better stay super cheap." You can find Self-Edge denim on JackThreads, but at the same time, they're not selling $250 pairs of jeans.

Mr. Lerer said JackThreads recently did a sale on vintage Patagonia items and is incorporating more home goods. "But without the Gilt approach of: JackThreads Home! JackThreads Taste!"

That may be why the front page of Reddit has become an irresistible target for feel-good messages about brands and businesses. Despite the community's penchant for skepticism, Costco, Taco Bell (in fact, most of the Yum! Brands) and a handful of startups have all made very conspicuous appearances on Reddit in the last year--not via paid ads, but through what at first glance appear to be organic and genuine discussions by Reddit users.

But are they? Could they really be? As someone responsible for my own fair share of marketing stunts, I am suspicious and cynical—I’ll disclose that right up front. I very well may be seeing signs of undue influence where there is only rule-bending behavior, but then again, I've also begun getting requests from clients about the possibility of orchestrating Reddit machinations. So because of this, and because of what I've observed behind the scenes, I'll come out and say it: what's going on Reddit these days has media manipulation written all over it.

Naturally, some of this media manipulation is completely harmless—like brand messaging, which corporations spend billions to propagate, passing as content.

Take Costco, which made the front page of Reddit multiple times via the "Today I Learned" (TIL) subreddit. One post even featured "facts" lifted straight from the Costco corporate site. Altogether, they amassed more than 40,000 upvotes (in other words, user approval) and 3,000 comments chattering about how great Costco is. And it wasn’t the only business getting love.

Through the TIL subreddit, Subaru let everyone know about its environmental concerns. Meanwhile, McDonald’s dominated the section for weeks. Walmart, Air Jordans, Jell-O, DeLorean Motor Company, Netflix and Mountain Dew have also shared the Reddit spotlight. And Volvo owns the fourth most popular TIL post ever, alerting everyone to its good deeds and indirectly marketing its cars as safe.

It’s possible that these positive messages have been posted by legitimate users and fans. Or they could have been posted directly by the self-promoting brands themselves, or perhaps given an extra push by upvoting rings or paid votes. It’s hard to say until someone is caught blatantly violating the rules.

But as a marketer, I find it fascinating that such humblebragging--which clearly benefits these businesses—passes so freely as “facts.” (To be fair: the self-described skeptics at Reddit have identified some embarrassing attempts and tagged them with the “Hail Corporate” tag, but this is comparatively uncommon). Regardless of who generated them, these brand-friendly threads propagate marketing messages for brands, telling their story as “content,” and it's all the more potent because it doesn’t feel like that’s what’s happening.

So whether Redditors know it or not, there is a now a big "deceive me" sign on their back. And marketers are going to try to take advantage of it.

Why would marketers want to target Reddit? It's simple.

All these brands are after the elusive Reddit karma--the goodwill and sheer volume of a community that has the power to make stars (Neil deGrasse Tyson), re-energize careers (Louis C.K.) or stand in as the world's stage (the Obama AMA). They want what Andre Johnson got when a photo of his smiling face and receipts for $19,000 in toys for a children's charity made it to the front page (only, you know, they don't want to actually do their own good deed). Brands have noticed that as soon as the picture started getting votes, it was picked up by smaller blogs, then Deadspin, then USA Today, and on up the media chain. On Reddit alone, the photo got nearly one million views.

Reddit is like any democratic form of government—unless carefully guarded by its leaders and members, its trusts and privileges can be and often are abused. The temptation is so great and the upside is so high.

Reddit understands this, as its general manager Erik Martin told me: “We are always actively looking to uncover brands or anyone else attempting to game Reddit or any form of manipulation. If we catch someone, we will ban them and make it public, as we have done in the past.”

It’s ultimately an arms race between the two interests. With the high stakes, it should come as no surprise that marketers aren’t content to leave pageviews to chance. They aren’t just hoping their efforts make their way onto Reddit. They are creating stunts to take advantage of Reddit’s lack of defenses or, in my view, its gullible proclivities toward viral content.

One trend recently has been designing ads around Reddit’s most popular memes. You can only shake your head at how easily Oreo was able to follow up its recent domination of the front page with an interpretation of the Actual Advice Mallard meme by posting a picture on Instagram that said “Post Your Oreo Marketing Promotion To Reddit: For Foolproof Business Success.” The result: over 600,000 views and 600 comments on Reddit alone. Audi, Cheez-Its and others soon followed suit. More will surely come.

Part of the problem may be that, because it is self-moderated and made up of so many smaller communities, Reddit underestimates the value and attractiveness of the entire community. In a world where these boring (and often genuinely evil) brands have to buy their own Facebook fans, hold enormous sweepstakes or expensive events to get people to interact with them (see: bribes), or spend billions of dollars a year to co-opt popular culture, Reddit threads on which people are actually "learning," or hanging out or chatting are priceless. It's real people doing real things.

And with the barrier to entry being so low--where anyone can post a message--how could the brands not begin to meddle?

I never thought I'd say this about Redditors, who are enamored with their own ability to call bullshit, but they may just not be jaded enough to fully guard against this onslaught.

Because the only response to some of these threads is, c'mon.

This post by JackThreads made its way to the front page with over 2,000 total votes, while only gathering 20 comments. That ratio is a giveaway that something may be off. This post from an account an hour old, posting the title “MY BRAND,” still managed to score over 300,000 views for 1-800-Contacts. Cost? $0. This fairly basic photo blatantly advertising Domino's delivery gathered over 200 comments wondering how it appeared on the front page.

Pretty much none of those posts survive the old "Cui bono?" test. But since no one seems eager to apply it, brands are getting increasingly lazy and brazen.

Like this Bic ad. Is it really from an art student or did the pen company just ask someone with an established account to post it for them? If I was working at Bic, that’s what I would have tried. Why not? The image racked up more than 40,000 upvotes and 1.5 million views.

It's obvious why this kind of attention is attractive to brands. It's also possible to get this kind of attention legitimately, as I well know. In 2009, due to a shipping mix-up, an employee of mine at American Apparel accidentally sent a crate of clothes to the blogger WhatTheBuck (instead of the intended small package of two to three items.) The result was a hysterical video that went on to do nearly 150,000 views.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. These aren’t organic accidents or real fan-to-brand interaction. It’s just fakery--there’s too much of it for that not to be the case. And what's worse, the brands that are engaging in the stunts could easily afford to pay for the ad space on those same pages. In other words, we're not talking about small creative marketing here--we're talking multibillion-dollar corporations using their enormous marketing teams to overwhelm busy volunteer moderators.

And these messages don't stay on Reddit. Reddit is their launching pad. Blogs like Betabeat, Business Insider, Huffington Post, Gawker and hundreds of others troll these sites looking for content they can republish and get traffic from. BuzzFeed, for example, is notorious for republishing content from Reddit. Meaning that one shill thread or photo on Reddit can quickly become pseudo-news and then real news across the web. And do readers understand or see the tainted origins of that content? Of course not.

It’s an obnoxious cycle. Reddit replaced the old Digg.com, which had become increasingly dominated by spam, trolls and fake news. Now it’s fighting off those same forces. With the new and improved Digg gaining traffic, despite unfriendliness to self-promoters, will Reddit find some way to purge itself of marketers? I hope so.

The site is at a crossroads about policing its sources and links. Usually Reddit makes the right choices in these positions, as it did when it banned sites like The AtlanticWire and BusinessWeek for spam and upvoting their own links.

I hope Reddit follows in its own footsteps once more. Or we’ll all be hailing our new corporate Redditors.

Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of  Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator and a PR strategist for brands and writers.

Secretly seething? (Photo: rosiesays.com)

While browsing our Google Reader this morning, we came across this list of wacky interview questions compiled by Glassdoor.com. You know the drill: "How many cows are in Canada?" (Correct answer: Who cares?) However, we were reminded of our favorite party game, which we haven't played in quite some time, wherein we investigate God-only-knows-how-reliable Glassdoor reviews of our favorite startups.

Let's just say there are some very unhappy underlings running around Silicon Alley.

Cash-rich Buzzfeed has just one review dating from May, written by a former senior developer who called it an "overall good place to work" and said his boss had "an insanely good sense of humor." But he adds,

Cons – Technology stack is kind of old. I left to work with newer shinier toys.

Advice to Senior Management – Encourage more of a hacker culture. Consider internal hack days.

We imagine $19 million will go a long way to upgrading software.

Tumblr, despite its gazillion page views, also has just one tremendously laconic review. The anonymous currently employee summed the place up as "addictive." Pros: "a lot of nice people." Cons: "when the site go's down." Let's assume this wasn't someone working within the company's editorial operation.

There are only three Foursquare reviews, all by folks who seem pretty happy, though there is a complaint that it's "Not as trendy as other startups. The backlash and snark have already begun." And that was before PrivCo released that damning forecast.

One former Thrillist employee seems a mite put out. Under pros, he/she wrote: "If you like to get drunk all the time this is the place for you. The JackThreads part of the company is doing wonderful." Yowzers! Some of us might call that a "perk." The griper also complains about a lack of office supplies (really, dude? try working in media) and poor work/life balance, and ends on a note that smells faintly of sour grapes, suggesting senior management should "Realize the talents in their employees and acknowledge it." U mad, bro?  

A former intern seems a bit more pleased with the experience, though: “Not once was there a day I wasn't ecstatic to go to work at Thrillist.” Okay kid, you don't have to impress the boss anymore.

ZocDoc has a whopping 62 reviews, almost half of which gave the place five stars. But that doesn't mean there aren't a few malcontents: eight reviews fall under "very dissatisfied."  The most recent unhappy review, posted five weeks ago by someone calling himself a current employee, complained of a "Sketchy and offensive office enviroment [sic]." Details, please! Another review, dating from October, advises the higher-ups:

Sell to a big firm. None of you know what you are doing. Maybe it is time to get grown ups in the door.

Of course, we've already made mention of complaints regarding Gilt Groupe. The bulk of the total reviews are either satisfied or at least neutral, but here's a very unhappy operations employee writing in August:

Management is cliquey and condescending. They push you too hard. Your job is below them and they don't offer to help with what you do when you are overwhelmed. Instead, they try to figure out better 'processes' and point the finger. Never been so unhappy with a department in my years experience in the job force and I'm not the first one of my co-workers to say that.

Our personal favorite, however, is the March 2012 review that lists the pros as "free granola and advice and a computer" and the cons as "unstable and strange and weird."

If there's one thing we've learned covering Silicon Alley, it's that a little free food goes a long way toward pacifying employees.

Soundcloud CEO Mr. Ljung (Photo: Twitter.com)

SoundCloud Busts Out Of Beta At this point, SoundCloud is basically the audio version of YouTube. A private-beta version of the site launched earlier this year called Next and the newest version integrates a bunch of those social features that the company hopes will help its users discover new music. “From today, ‘Next’ is now simply SoundCloud,” said Alexander Ljung, founder and CEO of SoundCloud in a press release sent to Betabeat. “It’s a platform for people to discover new, original music and audio, for creators to build audiences, and for everyone to share what they hear whether online or on mobile.”

The company claims that users now post over 10 hours of music and audio every minute while reaching over 180 million people. That’s a staggering 8% of the entire internet population, every month. On December 6th, mobile users will be able to enjoy reposts, updated mobile search, and UX updates on both iOS and Android SoundCloud apps.

Birds Do It, Bees Do It Online dating site HowAboutWe is now partnering with AARP to launch a new dating site for 50+ adults. Although millenials might find it the concept hard to swallow, it has potential to be one of the biggest sites out of HowAboutWe’s 32 partnered sites. The 50+ demographic is a huge growing dating demographic because of a huge increase in the divorce rate for people over 50. Hey, everybody needs some love!

Remember, Remember, The Facebook Of Last December Timehop, the app that reminds you of all the social media memories you made in your not-so-distant past, has a bunch of updates dropping in its latest update. You can now share pictures from your camera roll in your Timehop feed. First Foursquare checkins are now integrated into your memories too. Just when everyone forgot you were once mayor of Tom and Jerry’s…

You Must Be This Rich To Ride Free Valet, the travel membership site that offers you rewards and guides for $199 a year, told Betabeat over email that it's now in more than 52 cities and more than 100 hotels. They've offering free rides to the airport until February 1st for members staying at any of their New York hotels. The deal is also being offered to New York members who are on their way to stay at a Valet site somewhere else.

We Like To (Watch Them) Move It Move It Yesterday, Unpakt, the site that lets you compare movers, kicked off its "Innovators on the Move" series. It features tech entrepreneurs reflecting on recent moves in their lives. The first video in the series features the wedding planning tool, Lover.ly, founder Kellee Khalil. Lover.ly is moving into a brand new New York office and the video chronicles the move.

Innovators on the Move: Kellee from Unpakt on Vimeo.

Etsy Goes Full Mobile Etsy has officially released an Android version of its mobile app, after last week's launch of the company's iPad app. In a press release sent to Betabeat, Etsy said that nearly a quarter of its mobile web visitors come from Android devices all over the world. To celebrate the occasion, you should buy yourself this Android mascot cookie jar.

Big Money To Nice People Google is trying hard to tip the scales more toward good than evil. The company has just launched the Global Impact Awards, which honors nonprofits using technology to tackle problems. The inaugural recipients include a $5 million gift to charity: water, a $5 million prize to Donors Choose, and $2.4 million to Givedirectly, a much younger company than the others.

Lose That Basic Black Jackthreads and designer Adam Gianotti have just released the new collection of their line, Viveshirt. The team has also just put their fall collection from their line Goodale on sale. There's a lot of French terry in both collections and some perfect pieces for that "fancy hoodie" look.

Tweeters Be Shopping Some of those absymal Black Friday stats may be misleading. While IBM reported that 0.34 percent of all online sales over Thanksgiving weekend came from social sites, Jirafe, an ecommerce analytics platform found much higher numbers. Using their unique analytics, the company found that 1.27 percent of sales come from social sites like Facebook and Twitter. A key difference between their analytics is that Jirafe looks at the social media profiles of shoppers. Say for instance a customer buys a product after clicking through from a tweet featuring a new deal. Jirafe can track this data while IBM only looks at ads.

Consumer Cash Flow Consmr, a mobile app that provides ratings and reviews for products, announced earlier this week that it has secured $565,000 in seed funding. The round was led by Lerer Ventures with participation from IA Ventures and MESA+. In a press release sent to Betabeat, CEO Ryan Charles said, “Consmr is well positioned to mobilize the wisdom of the crowds and extend it to everyday product decisions.”

One of Bonobos' displaced Ninjas. (Photo: Tumblr)

Many startups are able to work remotely with just a laptop and a working Internet connection--though good luck finding one right now. But for ecommerce companies focused on pushing products out into the real world, "just ship it" is taking on a whole new meaning. Between extensive power outages and three days without a functional subway, the disruption is likely to last through the week.

"Eccommerce companies are lucky since we don't have physical stores--we can handle a break pretty easily," said Gilt Groupe CEO Kevin Ryan. "We are a little bit like an airplane," he added: "you can turn off the engine for a little bit and there is no problem--if you turn off the engine for a while it is a disaster, but a few days is not a big problem."

That doesn't mean recovering from Sandy has been painless, though.

Many of the companies we talked to didn't have power, and they were preparing their customers for delivery delays.

JackThreads CEO Jason Ross reported that the company's Soho HQ is closed, as they've got no power. Many employees don't either, but they're doing their best to work. Problems also stemmed from JackThreads’ facilities across the East River: "Our warehouse and photo studio in Brooklyn have been shut down the last two days which has delayed our sales calendar as we can't receive merchandise, photograph merchandise or ship anything," he told Betabeat via email.

Mr. Ross expects the warehouse and studio will be back up and running sometime today, offering any employees who can get there a place to work. He's hoping the Soho office will be back online by Monday.

Bonobos' offices at West 25th and 6th Avenue are also closed, as they don't have power. "While Bonobos' 'free & fast' shipping generally arrives in two-days, delivery delays are expected," spokesperson  Kaitlyn Axelrod told Betabeat via email. Packages are getting out of their Massachusetts warehouse, they might take a few extra days to reach customers.

Meanwhile, Bonobos' customer service staffers in New York City are working where they can, and the Palo Alto team has stepped up to support them. "Ninjas are available via phone, email and social media to help customers track packages and answer questions," said Ms. Axelrod. The company's stylish employees have even created their own Tumblr, chronicling work-from-home post-Sandy.

Birchbox, Rent the Runway, and AHALife are all dealing with delivery delays, as well. "There have been a lot of elements out of our control," Rent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman told Betabeat.

Even for companies with working offices, it's all hands on deck. BaubleBar's Flatiron HQ didn't even lose power or Internet--"not sure how we narrowly escaped that," cofounder Daniella Yacobovsky told Betabeat via email. Yesterday, almost all of BaubleBar's staffers made it into the office, trekking from four of the five boroughs.

"People who lived near one another carpooled in (most with 2 hour + commutes), lots of folks brought food for the team and everyone has collectively put down their work and come into operations to help QC and fulfill orders," said Ms. Yacobovsky.

For the most part, companies seemed grateful the damage wasn't worse. “We’ve gotten in touch with every member of the team and they’re all safe," JackThreads' Mr. Ross said, sounding upbeat. "Everyone has found a safe place where they are able to work diligently and stay positive and productive.”

While Gilt Groupe doesn't have power in its main offices, the company's Brooklyn outpost (typically used for photo shoots) should be up and running again today. Because their customer support and distribution centers are located outside New York City, Mr. Ryan expects delivery delays of no more than a few days, and since they shoot product photos almost a week in advance, they haven't missed anything yet. "But one or two more days and it would have had an impact," said Ryan.

As it is, the hurricane has "hardly impacted business." They maybe lost 10 percent of sales for Monday and Tuesday, but overall they came out about even: "The bottom line is that some people had no electricity or phones so they obviously did not shop, some had mobile only and were bored so they shopped a little and some had both and were locked in their apartment and bored and they shopped a lot," said Mr. Ryan.

"In general, we got off very lucky," he said.

UPDATED: Gilt Groupe also tells us that, to help the affected areas get back on their feet, Gilt City NYC  will be donating 30 percent of profits from now through Sunday to the Red Cross's hurricane relief efforts. AHALife will also donate 15 percent of sales from October 31 to November 4 to the disaster response organization Team Rubicon.

Additional reporting by Nitasha Tiku.

(Photo: flickr.com/classicchanelhandbags)

Healthy Hills? Everyday Health, the SoHo-based and more successful version of WebMd, has acquired EQAL, the creators of Lonelygirl15 and the owners of LaurenConrad.com. Everyday Health's ad revenue grew 40 percent in the first quarter, compared to WebMD’s decline of 20 percent. This coincides with Everyday Health's announcement that they're moving beyond YouTube and launching a version of it's web show "Recipe Rehab" for ABC stations around the country.

Diller Brings Back Dog Ben Silverman's multimedia entertainment studio Electus, part of Barry Diller's IAC, just sold ten episodes of a new show starring Dog the Bounty Hunter and his wife Beth to CMT. "Dog and Beth are not only great television characters," said Electus CEO Chris Grant, "They are the best bounty hunters in the world, and this show is a natural evolution of their life story.”

Exit This Way Indeed, which describes itself as "the #1 job search engine worldwide," has been acquired (for a rumored $750 million to $1 billion price tag) by Recruit Co. Ltd, a large-scale Japanese HR company with over $10 billion in revenue. Rony Kahan, co-founder of Indeed, says that half of the site's traffic comes from outside the U.S and that they see this buyout to further that.

Thrillist on the LES Jackthreads, owned by Thrillist, just launched Goodale's Fall 2012 collection. Swedish singer/songwriter Sebastian Mikael modeled the clothes at the Lower East Side's Hotel Chantelle. There are a few days left of the heavily discounted sale. What, no Asher Roth seasonal playlist to shop by this time?

Shop Local Smallknot, the site that lets backers help small businesses get off the ground in exchange for rewards, had a pretty busy couple of weeks. They launched their first three Los Angeles businesses this week. The company partnered with Accion USA, a microlending company, to help fully fund A7, a Brooklyn-based shop that makes handcrafted leather camera straps. The team at Smallknot is also hard at work at a new product that will help small business owners get the word out about their products.

But It's So Dead At Night The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) launched a competition called “Take the H.E.L.M.: Hire + Expand in Lower Manhattan." The contest invites all companies that plan to either open or expand office space in Lower Manhattan in the next 12 months to apply for the opportunity to win a grand prize of $250,000. Twenty finalists will also will also receive $20,000 each. David Tisch and former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt will join Reddit's Alexis Ohanian as judges to pick the winner.

Will Hack For Food NYU's Courant Institute will be holding a hackathon this weekend with over 300 hackers already planning to attend. It starts this Saturday at 2 p.m. and goes until Sunday at 2 p.m. Appetude will be providing free food at the event for sleep-starved participants.

Mongo Matriculation 10gen announced today that it will offer free online training courses for its parent company's key product, MongoDB. The courses are open for registration now--there's one for developers and one for administrators. Lead MongoDB developer Dwight Merriman will teach the first class that starts in early October. Learning MongoDB is apparently the second most wanted skill companies are looking for right now.

Très Fab Custom design shop, Fab, just expanded the site's European version, which already has 2 million members. These updates essentially make the site just as fully functional as the U.S. version. There are already 200 million Fab employees overseas. The company says that Fab Europe is on pace to represent about 30 percent of the company's 2012 sales.

Changing That Ratio Women 2.0, a media company that offers resources for aspiring women in tech, just announced its partnership with Google. Their first effort together will be pumping up Women 2.0's signature event, Founder Friday, a monthly networking meetup. Detroit and Mexico City will host the event on November 16th, followed by Sao Paulo, New Orleans, and Moscow later on. Mary Grove, head of entrepreneurship outreach at Google, said, "We're looking forward to hosting these important gatherings in Google offices around the world and working together to help female entrepreneurs turn their ideas into innovative, sustainable businesses." No word yet on whether the gift bag includes What Would Marissa Mayer Do? bracelets.

Mr. Lerer (Photo: Crunchbase)

Fresh off the heels of the news that Thrillist had raised a $13 million Series A, its men's clothing retailer, JackThreads, announced exclusively to Betabeat today that it has hit one million orders.

"Our growth has been insane," said Devon Giddon, Thrillist's director of communications. "In 2010, we were processing approximately 8,000 orders a month and now we're doing around 13,000 orders a week! And 60 percent of those orders are from repeat buyers."

Back in August when Thrillist CEO Ben Lerer and team announced that they'd raised $13 million after seven straight years of solid bootstrapping, Mr. Lerer told Betabeat that a significant chunk of the funding would be used to build out Thrillist's ecommerce arm, JackThreads.

"It's sort of unbelievable how quickly this thing is scaling," Mr. Lerer told us by email this morning. "JackThreads brand has clearly struck a chord and this milestone is proof that media companies can sell products to readers with an honest and focused approach. I'm pretty sure JackThreads will be the largest company on earth soon."

Mr. Lerer intends to hit that sweet spot between media and ecommerce, and JackThreads is integral to realizing that vision. Acquired by Thrillist in 2010, the members-only men's online clothing retailer has since spawned two in-house labels, including Goodale, launched in April.

The two in-house brands are the highest sellers on JackThreads, Mr. Lerer told us back in August. “We’ll continue to lean into private label," he said, just after the Series A announcement. "We’re seeing that we’re really good at creating merch and we understand what our guys want. I don’t see any reason why next year we couldn’t have 10 to 20 private label brands that we own and operate in 20 different categories. It differentiates us from other people in the marketplace.”

With an impressive growth trajectory and one million orders on the books, expect a few more private labels to roll out in the coming months. We just have one question: how are the Jills handling all this success?

(Photo: Crunchbase)

It was a very busy morning for Ben Lerer, the 30-year-old Lerer Ventures scion and CEO of men's lifestyle brand Thrillist. The company announced yesterday that it had closed a $13 million series A, the first outside financing since Thrillist raised a $2 million seed round way back in 2005. Growing Thrillist from a Daily Candy-like daily newsletter to a men's lifestyle empire with little venture capital in just seven years is no small feat.

"That’s the cool thing for me," Mr. Lerer told Betabeat by phone this morning, his voice still colored with the excitement of closing a solid round. "That we were able to legit boostrap a business to 200+ people and $60 million in revenue without the money. It really gives me confidence that we have the right habits and the right discipline so that now that we have this money, we're going to know how to spend it the right way rather than spastically run around spending it."

The new round was led by Oak Investment Partners and included a follow-on investment from Bob Pittman's Pilot Group. ("I have such a close and trusting relationship with Bob and the team over there.") Oak managing partner Fred Harman has known Mr. Lerer for quite some time, so he's not afraid of the new cash infusion crippling the business's ability to stick to its guns. "We have a close relationship through everything he did with my father at HuffPo," said Mr. Lerer. "This isn’t the big bad wolf. This isn’t some scary financial institution. These are people who we trust. I've seen how Fred and Bob work with companies in good times and bad."

Thrillist plans to use the money to build out both its ecommerce platform in JackThreads as well as its media vertical. "I intend to remain profitable," stressed Mr. Lerer. "The strategy here is, 'Let’s continue to invest in really high quality content and consumer facing products that bring people happiness.'" This includes identifying some potential acquisition targets to build out verticals where Thrillist hasn't quite gained traction: travel, gadgets and sports, for example. ("We may be having some conversations, so I can’t spill too much," teased Mr. Lerer)

Thrillist will also continue to build out its private labels. The two in-house brands are the highest sellers on JackThreads, said Mr. Lerer. "We’ll continue to lean into private label. We’re seeing that we’re really good at creating merch and we understand what our guys want. I don’t see any reason why next year we couldn’t have 10 to 20 private label brands that we own and operate in 20 different categories. It differentiates us from other people in the marketplace."

With $13 million in hand, Mr. Lerer said, "I see no reason why we would ever need to go raise again, except in the case where we have extreme success where we invest incredibly hard or if we see an acquisition that we’re really jazzed about." An investor who hates raising? Oh, the irony.

For now, Mr. Lerer is looking forward to executing on his fresh Thrillist strategy and enjoying not worrying about money for a little while. "This is the fun part," he added.