Fourteen years after the movie’s release and millenials have already forgot the first rule of Fight Club. The latest blabbermouths to blow their cover hail from Bridgewater-Raritan High School in New Jersey, where students have been posting and promoting their videos in a Facebook group. Read More
Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest were hacked this week, after a security breach at customer-service provider Zendesk allowed a hacker to access user email addresses at the three social media companies. [Wired]
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s book marketing plans include “Lean in Circles,” in which women study Ms. Sandberg’s curriculum for career success. [NYT]
Twitter cofounder Ev Williams talks about when—and when not—to sell your company. [Medium]
Nevada became the first state to legalize online gambling. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie may sign a law legalizing Internet gambling in his state as early as next week. [The Washington Post]
If you’re a “startup junky,” what are you really addicted to? [PandoDaily]
Parts of New York and New Jersey are still without power from the last major news event and yet here we are, in the throes of election day. And with cleanup efforts still ongoing, there’s really no excuse for anyone who forgets one of the lessons we just learned about the rapid speed at which misinformation courses through social media in general and Twitter in particular.
For the love of God, as you go about your day for the next several hours, please take almost everything you read on Twitter with a grain of salt. No, a barrel. Maybe an entire salt lick. Read More
The ratings on Foursquare Explore are now powered not simply by randos assigning stars, but rather a number of factors like checkins and tips. [Foursquare Blog]
At GigaOm’s RoadMap conference, Kickstarter cofounder Perry Chen dropped a little knowledge on the crowd: Last year, $3 million went to gaming projects. This year, the sum is 20 times as high. [Twitter]
Washington wants to strengthen privacy protections for the kiddos, but Silicon Valley swears up and down the new rules are so bothersome it might make it impossible to even bother developing for children. That would be terrible, because then they might have to spend some time outside, God forbid. [New York Times]
Everyone’s just a touch nervous about the prospect of New Jersey’s vote-by-email scheme. [Computer World]
Tumblr now clocks in at 20 billion monthly pageviews. Whew. It’s also basically a ceaseless river of content, with 77 million posts every day on 79 million blogs. (Though presumably many of those are reblogging the same five pinup pics again and again.) [Daily Dot]
It’s fair to say that tech accelerator programs are launching, well, frequently now, all with the same basic template. Between Blueprint Health, DreamIt Ventures and Entrepreneurs Roundtable, Betabeat can barely keep up with the demo days just here in New York. It’s difficult to say who started the craze; Y Combinator may have pioneered the form, but TechStars put its version on TV and open-sourced the term sheets. Either way, everyone wants to launch or join a 12-week program that offers a seed investment and features meetings with mentors and a demo day with investors. Everyone including the state of New Jersey.
Applications are now open for a new accelerator called TechLaunch, funded in part by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority. Why? Because entrepreneurs were leaving the state to go to cities with tech accelerators. Now entrepreneurs from 10 to 12 startups can receive between $18,000 and $20,000 of seed investment and stay at Montclair State University “following a vigorous selection process,” according to a press release. “TechLaunch provides a select group of emerging portfolio companies early seed-stage funding, mentorship, key services and exposure to qualified investors, most notably during Demo Day.” AUGH MAKE IT STOP.
