What we're missing. (Photo: YouTube)

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.

The NDA states:

"...under no circumstances will you divulge the details of you entering and being on the Property or engaging in the Activities by any means or through any media whatsoever, including without limitation, through photographs, video, blogging, texting, 'Tweeting' or posting any such information on any social media site."

If this wasn't ridiculous enough, violators face a $5 million fine. That could buy a lot of spiked hats.

Anyway, if this is just a big guerrilla marketing ploy to make us rewatch the “Beauty and a Beat” music video that an “anonymous blogger” “illegally released” footage of, it worked.

(Photo: Instagram/Mazy)

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?

Curtain's up This week, Facebook sibling/musical theater devotee Randi Zuckerberg attended and spoke at TedXBroadway. More importantly: She got to meet Lt. Sulu himself, George Takei:

With @georgetakei at #TEDxBroadway! He was so great talking about theater & social media, I don't even have to speak! twitter.com/randizuckerber…

— Randi Zuckerberg (@randizuckerberg) January 28, 2013

Not even gonna front like we aren't jealous.

Devastating It seems Monday was a rough day in the Business Insider office. We speak not of Henry Blodget's regaling the Internet with tales of his air travels, nor of the site's tussle with the Awl over the nature of parody. No, we speak of the fallout from Sunday's episode "Downton Abbey." "Still kinda shaken by last night’s Downton," tweeted deputy editor Joseph Weisenthal. "Sybil?" Mr. Blodget responded with understanding and sympathy, before adding that it had been "brutal."

It's hard but we'll all get through this somehow, just like the Granthams. Stiff upper lip!

Panty Drop Off Softbank principle and devilishly stylish VC Nikhil Kalghatgi got a little surprise in the mail this week. Turns out some silly prankster decided to send him "3.9 kg of panties." Though he declined to reveal just how many pairs of panties equal 3.9 kg, he invited one lucky user to DM him on "Thonger, the all panties Twitter." Sassy.

(Photo: Twitter)

It's all Greek to me I don't think that word means what you think it means.

(Screenshot: Twitter)

The Coworker Is Right WeWork resident Asi Lang guessed the right price on stage with Drew Carey, while his fellow coworkers watched on TV from 175 Varick Street. Between this and all the Foursquare questions on "Jeopardy," game shows seem to have a Silicon Alley bias.

Oh you fancy huh Appcelerator head of partnerships and occasional Betabeat columnist Spencer Chen has some sick Super Bowl plans. Too bad TechCrunch columnist MG Siegler has better ones. Suddenly we feel gloriously populist for our plans to watch it in our PJs on a normal-sized TV.

(Photo: Tumblr)

Ms. Nguyen (Photo: We Are NY Tech)

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."

The email announcement explains that the transition from Thre.ad to That's Foxy is due to the fact that many of Thre.ad's users browsing street style looks wanted the option to be able to easily shop for the items showcased in the photos. A quick perusal of That's Foxy shows street style-like photos with a specific accessory or article of clothing highlighted, which users can click to purchase.

Thre.ad launched in private beta in November 2011 and was in the process of raising a $760,000 round back in February; according to its Form D, the company had raised $560,000 of that round. No updated Form Ds have since been filed.

The company's CEO, Mimi Nguyen, is a fixture on the New York tech social scene. Last year, she helped organize the Raise Cache fashion show to help benefit Hack NY. Justin Bieber, who knows Ms. Nguyen through a nonprofit she cofounded called Pencils of Promise, was rumored to have agreed to invest in Thre.ad, though that was never confirmed. "If he ever wants to [invest], I wouldn’t be against that,” Ms. Nguyen told Mashable at the time.

Wonder if the Biebs will be willing to toss some cash at That's Foxy?

Ms. Mayer with Team Stamped (Photo: Instagram)

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.

Back in July, when Stamped decided to pivot from a ratings app into a recommendations app--the company brought on a slew of celebrity investors like Justin Bieber, his manager Scooter Braun, Ellen Degeneres, and Ryan Seacrest--alongside established players like Bain Capital Ventures, Google Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures. (Stamped wasn't the only startup to give up on trying to rate things: Kevin Rose's Oink shut down in March.)

Stamped is bright, sleek-looking, and easy-to-use, but around the time of the revamp, we wondered whether it would be able to get any traction in recommendations--even with Biebs filming videos about his favorite things. The gamble may not have worked as intended. Mashable notes both the iPhone and web app will be "discontinued by the end of the year," with the team's talents now geared toward helping Yahoo transform from a dotcom relic into a mobile company.

For some insight into how celebrity tech investments work, check out The New Yorker's profile of Scooter Braun, who had invested in ten startups, including Uber, Stamped, and Spotify, when the article was published in September.

"Cross-promotion is all part of the interdependent business culture that Braun has created. For instance, he cuts Bieber in on many of his tech investments. Sometimes he has Bieber put money into a start-up company directly; sometimes he offers to have him promote a product in return for equity. “If it makes sense for Justin’s brand, I show it to him,” Braun said. (He has a similar relationship with his other artists, and with Ellen DeGeneres, with whom he has shared tech-investing tips: “She put me onto something, and I put her onto something.”)"

(Photo: YouTube)

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"

Rumors of possible nude pictures existing on the stolen harddrive immediately began swirling. Mr. Bieber tweeted at the alleged thief, a user named gexwy: "@gexwy no matter what you have and what you post tomorrow i know my fans wont leave me. screw it. #toostrong."

Gawker published a link to the alleged nude photo, which was quickly debunked as not belonging to Mr. Bieber because the "bellybuttons didn't match." Teen girls everywhere sobbed silvery, mascara-tainted tears into their Victoria's Secret LOVE hoodies.

But today, Mr. Bieber and his team revealed that they had orchestrated an elaborate hoax on the media and the millions of beliebers out there. They released the video for Mr. Bieber's newest single, which is called "Beauty and the Beat" and features Nicki Minaj At the beginning of the video, the following screen flashes:

(Photo: YouTube)

You just got trolled by Justin Bieber. And how does that make you feel?

Mr. Bieber's manager Scooter Braun is a known expert media manipulator, having scooped the Biebs up from YouTube obscurity and painstakingly packaged him into the megastar he is today. Plus, with 29 million drooling Twitter followers, it's not like it's difficult to control the message--for better or for worse. How quickly we believed the stolen personal tech tale also speaks to how saturated our culture has become with celebrity hacking.

It all just seemed so... beliebable.

Update: The Daily News reports that Mr. Bieber's camp says his laptop actually was stolen. We just don't know what to belieb anymore.

Here's the video. Maybe it will cheer you up.

(Photo: Instagram)

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.

If you think that's bad, you have to hear what Ronald McDonald has been up to.

The settlement agreement arrives just as the FTC wants to adopt major changes to outdated laws regarding online child privacy protection. Companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google submitted comments which warned that "some of the proposed changes were so unworkable that they could deter companies from providing sites and online services to children," says the Times.

The only upside in the seemingly intractable problem of protecting children, who are pretty adept at getting around those protections, without negatively affecting the rest of the Internet is that the Chairman of the FTC came thisclose to uttering the word "Belieber."

“Marketers need to know that even a bad case of Bieber Fever doesn’t excuse their legal obligation to get parental consent before collecting personal information from children,” Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the F.T.C., said in a statement.

Mr. Braun did not wear a Mickey Mouse shirt.

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.)

Mr. Werde kicked off the panel with a raucous slide deck, promising to only curse a few times during the panel after informing the audience that, "When the digital revolution happened, the music industry was the first one to shit the bed." Can't say he isn't honest.

After a conversation with Julia Nunes, a ukulele player who got her start on YouTube, Misters Braun and Rapino took the stage to discuss how their industries--record lable management and concert promotion, respectively--have shifted with the advent of social media.

Mr. Rapino argued that the Internet has actually been greatly beneficial to the concert promotion business, because it allows people to connect with music and bands in ways they couldn't before. "The Internet is the greatest thing to ever happen to live music," he said. "Social media is the greatest thing to ever happen to the concert business." Given his enthusiasm, perhaps Mr. Rapino should consider signing up for the Internet defense league.

"The way I look at the Internet is different than the way the media describes the social revolution," Mr. Braun chimed in. "The way I look at it is: it saved me a lot of time. I look at social media as a way to interact on an intimate, one-on-one basis."

Mr. Braun argued that creating that genuine connection between fan and artist is what makes artists successful, and without social media that connection wouldn't be possible.

"How many of you in the audience think Justin Bieber is manufactured?" he boldly asked. A bunch of hands timidly went into the air. "That is what I have to battle every day, because people assume success on a major scale is manufactured," he admitted. "But what I'm trying to make people understand with the Internet is if it is manufactured, you have no chance. [The fans] see everything."

Mr. Braun also didn't hold back when it came to his opinions on the old school industry bigwigs. "I think the only reason the music industry is slow is because you have people who are older who don’t wanna lose their jobs, who don’t what they’re doing," he confidently told the ground. "And I’m probably going to get into a lot of trouble for saying it, but I don’t give a fuck."

Say what you will about Mr. Braun, but his swag is pretty self-evident.

Aerial view. (Photo: Google Maps)

When Anonymous isn't claiming to have leaked Apple IDs, they occasionally publish personal info about people for the lulz. Case in point: they just tweeted the address of one world-famous teen heartthrob Justin Bieber, much to the delight of Beliebers everywhere.

"For the beliebers out there, your man lives at 25202 Del Prado Grand, Calabasas, CA 91302," @YourAnonNews, one of Anonymous's main Twitter handles, tweeted a little over an hour ago. Betabeat has confirmed that the address is indeed the correct residence for Mr. Bieber, though whether or not the news was already out there is yet to be determined. It seems the Beliebers were already in possession of this juicy piece of info last month.

@justinbieber 25202 Del Prado Grand, Calabasas, CA 91302, United States.we both know that address is hahaha

— MicaelaBieber (@MicaelaBieberM) August 21, 2012

Mr. Bieber, who--according to a New Yorker profile of his manager Scooter Braun--lives in the house with a roommate, recently purchased the over 9,200 square feet home back in the spring. X17 published photos of the Biebs' new digs, and the address number for the house--25202--is easily visible in one of them. According to the LA County Assessor's office, the 7-year-old 6 bedroom, 7 bathroom house was purchased on April 16, 2012 for $6,500,065 (down from its original listing price of $7.5 million.)

Good thing the house is safely situated in a gated community.

"Why was Justin Bieber's address dropped?" tweeted Anonymous. "For the lulz, you laughed right? ;)"

Twitter's new look.

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."

Mr. Costolo was in the no-doubt rare experience of being sandwiched in between Justin Bieber's mom and a concert by Pink.

The announcement itself was preceded by a brief tour of the Twitter offices, guided by a reporter identified as hailing from E! News and introduced with the song "Rockin' Robin."

Interwoven with employee interviews and footage of the company cafeteria (which is apparently called the @birdfeeder) was an explanation of just what the company does and how ubiquitous it's become. The Biebs uses it! Obama and Romney use it!

"The draw is working on something that matters," Mr. Costolo explained, when the free snacks came up.

Once the brief office tour wrapped up, it was on to the unveiling. Mr. Costolo emerged from the green room to join Matt Lauer, Ryan Seacrest and that woman who isn't Ann Curry on the couch, in front of some strange red flower arrangement.

But not so fast--first, Mr. Lauer wanted to hear about Twitter's purpose in the long term. (You and me and everyone in the tech press both, Matt.)

"Twitter brings you closer," he said. "We see this over and over again from our users. It brings them closer to the action. It brings them closer to their heroes. Ryan's got--" and here he gestured to Mr. Seacrest, seated mere feet away--"8 million followers on Twitter. It's because he pulls them into everything he's doing. and brings them closer to everything he's doing."

Sounds to us like media might be winning the tug-of-war for Twitter's soul.

Finally, at the end of the segment, it was time to actually debut the new look.

He also added that the company is debuting an iPad app redesign, which is "all about letting people flip through photos and videos more easily."

Twitter explained the changes in more detail on the company blog, adding that, on mobile, you'll also photo streams below a person's most recent tweets.

Word came yesterday that image hosts were the next third-party services to get the boot, and from the new look it's easy to see why--a big part of this redesign appears to be standardizing the photo browsing experience. So as you consume your mid-morning coffee, you might want to take a moment to pour one out for yfrog and Twitpic.

(Photo: Reddit)

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.

Following the end of Dawson’s Creek in 2003, Mr. van der Beek acted in off-Broadway plays and landed a spate of brief guest spots on shows like How I Met Your Mother and Medium, but none packed the same cultural punch he’d had with Dawson’s. It wasn’t until January 2011 when Mr. van der Beek reappeared on the scene, eschewing the traditional vehicles for stardom and embracing that notorious crying GIF.

“If you’re under the age of 20, odds are good you know me best from a five second clip of me crying that’s circulating the Internet,” begins a Funny or Die video where Mr. van der Beek pokes fun at his own memedom. The short was accompanied by a Tumblr, which--until last July--posted GIFs of Mr. van der Beek “emoting.”

“When I pitched him the idea, I was like, ‘Hey, I don’t know if you’re aware of this phenomenon on the Internet about you...,” Lauren Palmigiano, the writer and director of the James van der Meme video, told Betabeat by phone. “And he was like, ‘Oh, certainly I’m aware.’ So I guess people tweet it to him all the time and he gets sent the image. He knew about it and was totally game to make fun of himself.”

“It’s the largest reaction face out there—Dawson’s crying face,” said Darryl Gudmundson, a “Gatekeeper” at Funny or Die who helped come up with the idea for James van der Memes. “We shot a bunch of GIFs the first day and he came back again and we shot another 300. We just made a repository of all these James van der Beek GIFs that we could release for six months.”

Funny or Die was launched in 2007 by Gary Sanchez Productions, a production company helmed by comedians Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, and frequently features celebrities in its sketches. As an April Fool's Joke in 2010, Funny or Die collaborated with Justin Bieber, staging a "Bieber" takeover of the site. John Hamm, Zach Galifianakis, Natalie Portman and Rashida Jones have all participated in Funny or Die sketches. More recently, the site has traveled down the food chain a bit, tossing the limelight onto stars like Alan Thicke, Renee Zellweger and a rapping Rachel Bilson.

Funny or Die has established itself as a savvy peddler of memes, listicles and videos that are coated in a thick layer of ’90s nostalgia and sprinkled with absurdity. The site’s viral videos have performed so well that they’ve been parlayed into a late-night HBO show entitled Funny or Die Presents, now in its second season.

“I think there are a lot of celebrities who don’t realize they have a presence on the Internet,” offered Dan Abramson, an editor for Funny or Die’s pictures and words section. “Like, I’m pretty sure Nicolas Cage has no clue.”

The emotive Mr. Cage would have to actively avoid the Internet to be unaware of the myriad memes that trail his Hollywood persona. There is “Nic Cage as Everyone,” a popular Tumblr where users Photoshop Mr. Cage’s face onto the bodies of other celebrities like Donald Trump, Amy Winehouse and Richard Simmons; “Nicolas Cage is a Vampire,” which spawned from an 1870 portrait of a man with an eerie resemblance to Mr. Cage that was auctioned on eBay; and a YouTube video--our personal fav--that mashes up the weirdest scenes from his 2006 film Wicker Man, most notable for the bizarre line: “Not the bees!!!”

So who’s next to emerge from the Funny or Die pipeline, flanked by Internet glory? Turns out it’s not something you can really predict.

“That kind of fame happens overnight,” explained Dashiell Driscoll, another Funny or Die employee who helped usher James van der Memes into fruition. “I also don't think we're in the business of making people like widely disliked celebrities. If everybody thinks you suck, it's probably because you suck. To try and change that with an Internet video is an uphill fool's errand with temporary results.”

Still, we wondered: If you could pick any celebrity to appear in a Funny or Die sketch, who would it be?

“Personally, I'd say Rick Moranis,” Mr. Gudmundson replied, without missing a beat.