Mr. Karp (via livestream.com)

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]

Mr. Borthwick (photo: screencap)

Stand down, Instapaper fanatics: Betaworks has no plans to shut the service down. That was the first question out of Alexia Tsotsis's mouth this morning at Disrupt, when she took the stage to interview CEO John Borthwick.

Wearing his ubiquitous brown corduroy jacket, Mr. Borthwick told her no, followed by an awful lot of throat-clearing.

"It's a wonderful product, it's a wonderful brand," he said. "It is an important part of what I see as an emerging ecosystem of products, some of which we're building at Betaworks and some of which we see invested in, that relate to the future of news and the future of media. And so we're going to build."

That Instapaper acquisition, by the way, started with a 2 a.m. email from an anxious Marco Arment, which was trying to figure out how to juggle Instapaper with his other commitments. He wanted to grow the service, but he didn't want to, you know, manage people and raise the money. Then came the late-night bolt from the blue: Betaworks!

Mr. Borthwick declined to divulge the terms of the deal, other than to say that Betaworks has a majority stake and there's some revenue share involved. Apparently that app was making a million bucks a year, though, which explains how Marco's paying for all that fancy coffee.

Elsewhere in the Chelsea-based collective, a team is readying a new product due to launch mid-week, and Mr. Borthwick let slip that it's some sort of game. Sadly it's not Digg's much-anticipated (by bloggers, anyway) Google Reader replacement, which "we're dashing to get done in time."

"We were blindsided a little bit by the timing of the announcement" from Google, he added, though a reader product was already on their roadmap at the time. "It's an important part of the puzzle."

Mr. Borthwick sure likes that image. He refused to pick a favorite Betaworks production, too, telling Ms. Tsotsis, "All these products are related in my mind, and so it all fits together in that puzzle. It's the puzzle that fascinates." What schemes are brewing under all that hair, John?

Ditching the suit for a swimsuit. (Photo: Flickr.com/gpaumier)

Hawaii Zuck-O Look who ditched the hoodie (but kept the Adidas sandals). Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was recently spotted indulging in a little Hawaiin R&R with wifey Priscilla Chan. US Weekly reports the pair “looked excited to be spending quality time together,” which makes sense since it's pretty easy to be happy when you’ve escaped the maw of Silicon Valley. The Zucks also “chowed down” on something called “beachside burgers” at a “picnic table.” Stars: they're just like us (but rich).

Instaparty Former Tumblr engineer and prolific blogginghead Marco Arment officially sold his company, read-it-later app Instapaper, to NYC-based Betaworks yesterday. Though he will stay on indefinitely as an advisor, Mr. Arment appeared to be celebrating the occasion by tweeting uncharacteristically adorable things about his followers:

https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/327636666787454976

Of course, this aroused the wry suspicion of Mr. Arment's followers:

https://twitter.com/meaghano/status/327637122309828608

Mr. Arment, as it turns out, appeared to be rightfully celebrating his Betaworks deal with a delicious cold beverage. "I can’t feel my face much anymore," he admitted. "I’ve had one beer. Granted, it’s about 20% ABV. It’s a hell of a beer." Lightweight!

So maj It's become somewhat of a celebrity rite of passage to participate in the ever-meta act of snapping a photo of yourself with Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, then plastering it onto--that's right--your Instagram profile. Stylist, fashion designer and Bravolebrity Rachel Zoe is the latest victim of this trend, snapping the below photo of her and Mr. Systrom. Sorry, Rach, but Kev is much better at smizing.

(Photo: Instagram)

Cult of Steve Erin Caton, a former project manager at Apple, took to Medium today to lament the growing number of douchey startup CEOs, who--in their attempt to emulate Steve Jobs--end up growing ever-douchier and unwilling to listen to peer feedback. To illustrate her story, she shares two anecdotes of her experience with Mr. Jobs: one, in which he cut in front of her in line at the Apple cafeteria (rude!), and another in which he blamed the Mobile Me team for a shoddy launch.

She writes:

Once it was up, we (at least a hundred of us) got called into a meeting with Steve Jobs. We all walked over to the building like we were headed to the guillotine. He stood in front of us and yelled at us, told us that we should be mad at each other, said we could have done a staggered launch and complained that we didn’t even try to do all the things that we (those on the ground floor of production that actuallymake the fucking products of the world) had been begging to do. It was the world’s best de-motivational speech.

We look forward to Ashton Kutcher's dramatic reading of this Medium post.

Must love Martha Poor Martha Stewart. You could give her a bag of cotton balls, used gum and a Razr phone and she’d craft the most beautiful centerpiece perfect for any Bat Mitzvah. But the one thing she can’t master is the art of filling out her Match.com profile, because it’s too damn hard. “It was, like, impossible,” the 71-year-old told Today bully Matt Lauer. You don’t have to use your words on Tinder, Martha.

https://twitter.com/todayshow/status/327751873564114944

Wows all the way down Storied VC Marc Andreessen took a break from annotating hip hop lyrics this week to gush about the potential transformative nature of Google Glass at the she++ Conference, when he jokingly claimed to already be beta testing Google Contact Lenses. Mr. Andreessen also took time to preach on the life-changing wonders of Google Glass, with a twinge of Valley girl thrown in. “You put it on and you’re like ‘Oh my God, I have the entire internet in my vision. Where have you been all my life?’” Andreessen said.

Andreessen and his firm are known for showing Glass some lovin', having already invested heavily in startups focused on building apps for Google Glass. But Mr. Andreessen is probably so gung-ho about Glass because he's hoping they'll help him finally solve the mystery of Silicon Valley Cougar Night at the Rosewood Hotel.

Get Dorsey Man of few emotions Jack Dorsey showed a flicker of excitement this week. No, he didn’t discover a new train yard to stare at--rather, he’s mildly excited about the new Daft Punk album. He attached a picture of the Get Lucky song art to prove to us that he knows how to take a screenshot or something. Maybe this was all ploy to subtweet us for not giving a shit about Twitter #Music.

https://twitter.com/jack/status/327796327931076609

(Photo: Business Insider)

Twitter attempted to have a conversation about race and the tech industry yesterday. The loudest voices?  White men on either side of the argument shouting each other down. What got obscured along the way was just how much pattern-matching plays into the lack of diversity in the tech industry and the people who cover it and how that holds all of us back.

They almost made Jamelle Bouie’s point for him.

In a feature for The Magazine, Mr. Bouie examined why the mastheads of tech blogs like The Next Web, The Verge, Engadget and Gizmodo were overwhelmingly white and male. Rather than “overt racism,” he found a prohibitive combination of dependence on unpaid internships--and the network effect of a wired boys club whose members sometimes seem to be talking solely for each other's benefit.

Technology has become just as pervasive as the Valley had always hoped, Mr. Bouie noted:

Gadgets are used by everyone. African Americans and Latinos, for example, are huge Internet users. They use Twitter and Facebook at higher rates than whites, they’re the most likely to use their cell phones for Internet usage, and the cell phones they buy are — for the most part — smartphones.

But so many of its gatekeepers are cut from the same cloth, limiting “aspects of their perspective.”

(For the purposes of his argument, Mr. Bouie focused on African-American and Latino writers: "In no way does this discount the real problems of access and representation for Asian Americans, but compared to African Americans and Latinos, they have much more representation in technology journalism." It's an important distinction. "Who Has It Worse," has to be the most divisive game ever marketed to minorities. But we all know there is a difference. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to themselves or doesn’t spend much time at tech events.)

I've never been discriminated against as a tech reporter because I’m Indian. At least I don't think I have. It's impossible to say, really, because there are a number of other factors that make me counter-to-type for a tech blogger. In addition to not being white, I’m not a dude and I didn't come from a family that had any interest in technology or media. It wasn't until I was 26 that a small J-school scholarship, student loans, and a semi-patient live-in boyfriend helped balance the cost of living in New York City with the limited income of a low-paying magazine internship.

The problem with identifying racism is that it seldom happens in isolation. Often it’s a confluence of factors that inspire people to see you as enough of an "other" to underestimate you, ignore you, deny you access, or simply not want to help.

Silicon Valley, however, does not respond well when its virtue is called into question. Unlike Wall Street, say, the tech industry cares what you think of it. It wants to be seen as a bootstrapped meritocracy--until the VC check arrives--open to all exceptional individuals and beholden to nothing but the disruptive tide of innovation ushered in by its gadgets, services and apps.

To imply otherwise is to call into question the hustle--the defensive posture of a “crush it” culture, which helps obscure both self-doubt and the fact that success can be capricious.

Mr. Bouie’s essay followed a similar line of reasoning to the one we've heard about the lack of black and Latino entrepreneurs and investors. ("I don't know a single black entrepreneur," Michael Arrington told CNN in 2011 before recanting his statement, claiming it caught him off guard.) Substitute "inability to find funding" for "unpaid internships," but the network effects and pattern-matching stays the same. Mark Zuckerberg becomes a billionaire and suddenly Ben Horowitz feels comfortable crowing that Andreessen Horowitz "likes to invest in college dropouts with insane ideas going after tiny markets with no way to monetize."

Another recent discussion, this one about sexism faced by women working in gaming, devolved into making fun of male tech writers somehow. Trust me, male tech reporters do not need any more attention. There is already an entire phalanx of marketing and PR professionals--by and large capable women--who make them feel special. That whole dance is about as gendered as a Budweiser commercial.

Still, why is there so much attention being paid to the people covering tech when the industry itself faces very real race and gender gaps? As Melissa Gira Grant recently wrote about girl geeks vs. boys kings, “the unpaid and underpaid labor of women is essential to making that machine go, to making it so irresistible.” Besides a touch of solipsism, it’s likely because the media has such entrenched discrimination problems of its own. It’s not just tech bloggers who are mostly white men. In 2006, The Observer looked at the magazine world’s vanilla ceiling. No one could believably argue that much has changed.

It’s a pity that the conversation around Mr. Bouie’s article degenerated into piling on his most easily dismissed detractor, Jason Calacanis. In the same breath that he invoked the emergence of post-race society, Mr. Calacanis assigned a percentage of Korean-ness to his daughter's face. Imagine being that child and then let's all move on.

Perhaps a better way to encourage more diversity in tech reporting is to look at why diversity is important. As Mr. Bouie noted, the homogeneity of voices has lead tech writers to sleep on Pinterest’s popularity with women and dismiss concerns about how App.net might lead to white flight because of the Twitter competitor’s $50 fee.

What’s more, the proliferation of apps, gadgets and services--coupled with the metastasization of the often complacent tech press--has amplified the noise-to-signal ratio.

A report last month claimed that of the 430,000 odd apps that will debut in the iOS App Store this year, most will go unnoticed. Gatekeepers can influence which products get attention and adoption, which in turn can affect funding.

Venture capital firms sometimes talk about pattern matching, the act of identifying traits of successful entrepreneurs and companies in order to replicate their wins. Even an industry that prides itself on innovating, it seems, actively seeks to propagate the status quo.

That might also be the reason why, when we read about how black people use Twitter, it's so rarely from their own perspective.

Thus far none of the posts related to this week’s controversy have shown up on Techmeme, so no points on the leaderboard for trying to talk about race. And the biggest beneficiary to all the ink spilled might be Marco Arment, the bomb-throwing developer behind The Magazine. Here’s hoping that changes.

Best job ever. (Photo: flickr.com/bytemarks)

Instapaper proprietor Marco Arment has launched an iPad magazine called The Magazine. It will "often, but not always, be about technology," and it'll run four articles (solicited just for the magazine) every two weeks. What happens when you Instapaper those articles is not clear. [Marco.org]

That latest update to Google StreetView adds a whopping 250,000 miles. Included are locations like Catherine Palace and Singapore's Fort Canning Park, which seems to confirm our suspicions they're having to look really hard for new things to photograph. [Google Maps Blog]

Speaking of Google: The company's self-driving cars probably have more full-time lobbyists advocating on their behalf than you. [ Wall Street Journal]

The IFP--the Independent Filmmaker Project, that is--will be developing and operating a Bloomberg-approved "Made in New York" Media Center, a kind of coworking-space-cum-networking-hub where creative types can connect with entrepreneurs and new technologies. Partnering with IFP will be General Assembly, which'll run educational programming in the space upon its opening in the spring. [IFP]

(Photo: twitter.com)

Instapaper, the hugely popular read-later app, recently announced on their blog that they have made their app compatible with the iPhone 5 and iOS 6. Along with that news, Instapaper founder Marco Arment revealed that users would now have the option to use Open-Dyslexic font, an open source font that makes things easier to read for people with dyslexia.

In his blog post, published yesterday, Mr. Arment asserts Instapaper's commitment to help the disabled:

Many people use Instapaper for improved accessibility, especially customers with low or no vision. Given what Instapaper does — capture any web page and present it in a consistent, adjustable, customer-controlled environment — it’s a natural fit for bringing improved accessibility and legibility to anyone who needs it.

Other similar apps, like the Android version of Pocket, have taken a big leap forward as well and gave their products text-to-speech capabilities.

Fortunately the iPhone has a wealth of tools for the visually impared. Along with Siri's dictation abilities, the iPhone also includes a feature called VoiceOver, a touch-to-speech software that reads your phone out loud for you.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated in the headline and text that Apple didn't have sufficient options for disabled readers. In fact, Apple has a lot of options for disabled readers and Instapaper can in fact use text-to-speech in conjunction with VoiceOver. Betabeat regrets the error.

QLabs (Photo: Foursquare)

Good news, Silicon Alley denizens. After much demand from fellow gossip-mongers, Betabeat has decided to resurrect your favorite recurring Friday feature. Welcome back to Rumor Roundup! Overheard a juicy tidbit about impending departures or imminent acquisitions? Dying to dish about startup blunders or frothy financing? Holler at your girls: tips@betabeat.com

THE SUN SOMETIMES SETS ON THE AOL EMPIRE Multiple sources have told Betabeat that AOL Ventures plans on shutting down QLabs--the press-shy experimental think tank in Soho located at 670 Broadway. "The time frame must be darn near immediate," one source told Betabeat, alluding to some urgency around winding down existing projects. "It's dead," said a source with indirect knowledge of the decision. "Their funding ran out," the second source added, speculating that the initiative had a set funding size, but "nothing yielded."

During a rare visit to QLabs in May, Betabeat discovered that the 4th floor space functioned as sort of the yin to AOL Ventures' investment yang--with both organizations trying to keep their corporate parent nimble.

QLabs hired a number of hackers who collectively decided on ideas to pursue. After some market research, the team, which operates non-hierarchically, churns out a prototype in six to eight weeks. If the minimum viable product fails to take off, it gets scrapped. The unspoken expectation, QLabs director Chris Danzig told Betabeat in May, was that it would produce a hit within two years, or roughly five months from now. “It’s very possible it could be a successful business with a few tweaks,” Mr. Danzig said back then. “But I’d much rather throw away something that has potential than burn away time on something that’s not working.”

In an email, Mr. Danzig said, "As a general policy we don't discuss the lab with the press (only the lab products)."

QLabs managed to get traction on at least two products, the incubator told us in May: Framey, which lets users post video comments on websites, and Brom.ly, an events recommendation service that pivoted into an events recommendation tool for the Huffington Post.

The recently launched HuffPost Labs, which operates like a startup for online news experiments within the Huffington Post, also works out of QLabs.  (Codecademy and Turntable.fm were working out of the spacious environs this spring.) But HuffPost Labs director Connor White Sullivan told us that the two incubator-like organizations are distinct. "We get our budget from HuffPost," he said of his budding four-person team. "All I can tell you is they're excellent engineers that built good products."

"As we refine our strategy, we have become more focused on our innovation agenda," an AOL spokesperson told Betabeat. "This was one component of a broader portfolio in AOL Ventures.”

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS A cadre of Silicon Alley citizens–including Onswipe CEO Jason Baptiste and CNET columnist Ben Parr–headed to Vegas two weeks ago for some end-of-summer partying and ended up having a meet cute with Ron Jeremy. Turns out that the notorious porn star likes hanging with the tech set. He showed up to the same mid-day party Mr. Baptiste and Mr. Parr were attending. "Ron Jeremy just came to our private party," one source told Betabeat. "He told us about his rap song with Lil' Wayne who the Hipset guys are close with.” Oh Mr. Carter, say it ain't so?

WWJD? Apparently some trolls have signed Instapaper founder and bombastic blogger Marco Arment up for an email newsletter he certainly didn't authorize. "Thanks to whichever of the trolls signed me up for all of these Jesus email newsletters yesterday," Mr. Arment tweeted. "Not a good week for liking other people." Following a very public spat, perhaps it was someone at The Verge?

SECRETS OF THE SOUL Whoever said ladyblogs are just for ladies clearly hasn't met NYU journalism professor Clay Shirky. Professor Shirky copped to enjoying advice columns on the women-focused site The Hairpin at a reading at HousingWorks Books. “My favorite bit of anonymity on the web is this thing that Edith Zimmerman runs on the Hairpin, called 'Imperfect Advice from Strangers,'" he said. "Which is the best name for an advice column, ever.”

(Photo: Ihave50dollars.com)

Much has been written about Valley celeb Dalton Caldwell and his rather notorious new social network, App.net. The Twitter-like site charges $50 to join, in an effort to weed out spammers and people who aren't really dedicated to the integrity of the community.

BuzzFeed wondered if the walled garden of App.net signaled the beginning of "white flight" from more inclusive sites. Venturebeat called Mr. Caldwell a "betrayed entrepreneur" crusading against Facebook and Twitter. But perhaps the most scathing critique comes from Ihave50dollars.com, a site built to look exactly like App.net that satirizes the fact that App.net is basically a social network for people with an extra $50 laying around.

"We're building a real-time social service where users who have $50 and developers who have $100 come get to tell people that they have $50 or $100, respectively," reads the site. For the "I have $50" member tier, you get a full year of telling people you have $50. For $100, you get the developer tier, which comes with a widget to embed on your blog that tells people you have $50.

The satirical site even mirrors the testimonials of the real App.net. "Like all of the other smart people (who have $50), I backed IHave50Dollars.com," it quotes Instapaper creator Marco Arment as saying. "I'd like to see IHave50Dollars.com succeed. A realtime social feed for telling people I have $50 is worth real earth dollars to me," says a Firefox engineer.

If you attempt to sign up, you're directed to a page with a TED talk about slavery, and asked the pointed (but vaguely preachy) question, "You know who really needs $50?" Touche.

According to WhoIs records, Ihave50dollars.com was registered two days ago by Max Spiker of Superhuman Ventures, LLC, a Sarasota, Florida-based company, and a writer of the blog DMAD.com. We've reached out to Mr. Spiker to confirm it's his site.

In the meantime, we'll just be sitting here wishing we had $50.

Update: Mr. Spiker confirmed to Betabeat that he's the mastermind behind the site. "After I stepped back from the herd mentality that was making app.net so popular I found it kind of absurd," he wrote in an email. "I thought I'd have some fun and put a mirror up to it. I'm glad others got the joke. Then I thought I'd use the opportunity to point attention to something that I wish got more attention, resources, and brainpower than it currently does - from people who obviously have an extra $50 lying around."

(Photo: howardstern.com)

Instapaper's Marco Arment just made his first big advertising buy with a spot on Howard Stern's satellite radio show, which aired last week. "I am a huge fan by the way, and this for real, of Instapaper," Mr. Stern says in the spot. "I have Instapaper on all my devices... I love you Instapaper. I want to make out with you."

Mr. Stern then walks his co-host through the app, explaining that she can save articles and even recipes without clutter. The ad lasts more than a minute during the news segment of the show.

Mr. Arment and Dan Benjamin addressed the ad on their podcast, Build and Analyze. "That was so much better than I would have expected," Mr. Arment said. "So I bought my first big ad." He laughed nervously. "That is a paid ad. I spent way too much money on it, I think, but I don't know."

"You're ascending to new levels," Mr. Benjamin said later in the show."

Instapaper has run ads on geeky podcasts and web shows before, Mr. Arment said, but the app is reaching near 100 percent awareness in that market. "I think this audience of geeks and apple fans who kind of like me, or read one of my blog posts, or, according to commentors, on the Verge, hate my guts... I've probably already saturated that market," he said.

Mr. Arment also considered buying ads on commuter trains in New York, which were the inspiration for Instapaper in the first place, but they were too expensive. "The Howard ad was very attractive to me. I know who listens to the show. I listen to the show. People underestimate The Howard Stern Show audience," he said. "The radio show is a four-hour long discussion and humor show... it really is a great show."

The Howard Stern ad runs for two weeks. On the first day, Mr. Arment's servers went down just before the show started; luckily, he got them back up before Mr. Stern plugged the app.

The ad hits around the same time as a major Instapaper release and rumors of the Android version of Instapaper.

Like Instapaper, Readability scrapes text from web pages and strips it of ads and tangential content for a more pleasant reading experience on the iPhone, iPad, Nook or Kindle. “First, we wanted to better distinguish the difference between having access to features and supporting content creation,” CTO Chris Dary wrote on the Readability blog.“Second, we wanted to keep Readability as open as possible so that third-party integrators to our service can access all of our features as well, without limitations.”

Readability distinguishes itself from Instapaper by shuttling subscription fees back to publishers. The subscription fee is now optional, and "the dollars you can now optionally pay are purely for supporting us and writers." No premium, no freemium; just a suggested donation.

Last year Readability got into a tiff with Apple, which before then had loved Readability so much it integrated the technology into Safari, after the App Store policy changed to disallow subscription-based apps that did not use Apple's in-app purchase system. Making the app free is one way to get around the problem.