If you are ever #blessed enough to get an invitation to one of Justin Bieber’s house parties, take plenty of sneaky Snapchats because you won’t be able to permanently document it. TMZ obtained a waiver that guests are required to sign before entering Bieber du Monde barring them from publicly discussing it on social media, like Twitter, Instagram or on Bodybuilding.com, or their ilk. Read More
Airbnb Is a Belieber Early this week, CEO Brian Chesky tweeted out a photo of Justin Bieber, whose startup cred apparently extends to Airbnb renter. The Instagram shot was taken by Mazy Kazerooni, cofounder of #DominateFund, Ben Parr’s still hush-hush, celebrity-focused micro-VC. Gee, wonder who their LPs are?
Friday flashback This week the revamped Digg got an unexpected celebrity thumbs-up: Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit fame (infamy?) tweeted at developer Robert Tolar Haining, “I love Digg. Great job and beautiful interface.” “Why thank you sir!” Mr. Haining replied, because what else are you going to say when Fred Durst compliments your UI? Read More
New York-based street style social network Thre.ad announced in an email sent out to users today that it will be shutting down. The company’s owners would probably rather you think of it as a pivot, however: According to the announcement, they’re folding Thre.ad into a new ecommerce site called That’s Foxy, which will deliver “shop-able products that are inspired by what’s trending in the community.” Read More
This is about as close as Marissa Mayer has come to being featured in an episode of Entourage. Today, word leaked that the new Yahoo CEO made her first acquisition–or acqui-hire, depending on who you ask. Ms. Mayer has purchased Stamped, a New York City-based recommendations app cofounded by two fellow Xooglers. Stamped cofounder Robby Stein worked closely with Ms. Mayer when the two were both still employed by GOOG.
Mashable says Stamped’s team, five of whom are former Google employees, will be joining “a new mobile product team to be established in New York under the leadership of Stamped’s three co-founders.” In a blog post published to the Stamped site, the team confirmed that they will be “discontinuing the Stamped product” but are working on a solution for users to export their data from the app.
Business Insider reports that the deal was closed for a ”a nice size,” but nothing too hefty. That should mean some extra spending money for a group of people who have no need for it: Stamped’s celebrity investors. Read More
Yesterday morning, music news outlets across the Internet began reporting that human Girl Talk game Justin Bieber had his laptop and camera stolen at a concert in Washington state. On Wednesday, the Biebs tweeted out to his 29 million followers that his stuff had been ganked from the Tacoma Dome. “yesterday during the show me and my tour manager josh had some stuff stolen. really sucks. people should respect other’s property,” he lamented. “i had a lot of personal footage on that computer and camera and that is what bothers me the most. #lame #norespect” Read More
Artist Arena, the division of Warner Music Group behind fan sites for pop music stars like Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Rihanna and Demi Lovato, has agreed to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. The New York Times reports that the company has agreed to pay a $1 million civil penalty for illegally collecting personal information from children.
The pop stars themselves haven’t been accused of any misconduct. But because Artist Arena asked for details like birth dates in order to let fans create online profiles, the FTC argued that the company knew very well that it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (Coppa) by collecting the addresses and cellphone numbers of roughly 101,000 users aged 12 or younger without parental consent or notification. Read More
Betabeat arrived at Google’s Big Tent event at the Skylight West building just in time for the Trends and Transformations in Music panel. Moderated by Billboard editorial director Bill Werde, the topic du jour was how the Internet and social media have ushered in a new era of music production.
In attendance were Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and none other than Scooter Braun, Justin Bieber’s talent manager and the man credited with discovering America’s favorite heartthrob. (Sadly, there appeared to be zero Beliebers in the audience, as no piercing screams rang out during the program.) Read More
Remember when Twitter was a mere fringe hobby, beloved by early adopters but mystifying to everyone else? Well, today we got a clear-as-a-bell reminder that those days are long gone, when the company took to the Today Show to introduce a new look.
Users can now add a header photo, and recent images have been relocated into their own snazzy box.
“What we’ve heard over and over again from our users is they want to bring more of their personality to the profile pages,” explained CEO Dick Costolo. “So today’s changes are all about bringing that personality forward, more media forward, more photos forward, so it’s much easier to see these media experiences and flip through them.” Read More
Though he is known as the hunky boy next door that made certain girls weak in the knees in the early aughts, James van der Beek, the titular star of the popular teen drama Dawson’s Creek, is an embarrassingly ugly crier.
In season three, episode 23 of the earnest, soap opera-like show, Dawson is so gobsmacked by being broken up with that he begins to cry. An animated GIF of that tender moment was soon splashed across websites from Reddit to Funny or Die. The meme is so prevalent that when you Google “James van der Beek,” the search engine even offers a correction: “James van der Beek crying,” it humbly suggests you search instead.
