SO THERE

Things aren't going so great over at the Silk Road. Where are nerds going to order their Molly now?! [Telegraph]

Now any old rando can shell out for promoted tweets. Please, please let's not start using this to promote resumes. [Ad Week]

Craigslist can no longer spook startups like Padmapper with threats of prosecution for copyright infringement: A judge has ruled the company has no such ownership of its users' listings. [Forbes]

"When he woke up, he found that Path had gone on a rogue mission early in the morning, texting and robocalling an unknown number of his contacts, including his grandparents." [The Verge]

Apparently authors still bother getting pissed at bloggers. [Daily Dot]

Oh hello.

There are now 150 million Snapchats sent every day. Very few of them are sent by people older than 30. [Business Insider]

Facebook is testing ads in your Graph Search, but so far they're not based on your searches. (So you won't get an eHarmony ad when you search "ex-girlfriends who I still love.") [TechCrunch]

The founder of the Silk Road--who goes by the name "Dread Pirate Roberts"--isn't too worried about Bitcoin booms and busts. “Bitcoin’s foundation, its algorithms and network, don’t change with the exchange rate." [Forbes]

The New York Times won a Pulitzer for investigating Apple's business practices. [Pulitzer]

Meanwhile, Funny or Die has released iSteve, its very own movie about Steve Jobs. [Funny or Die]

Not as glamorous as the movies make it seem. (Photo: Redbox.com)

Talk about a dubious distinction: Wired reports that an Australian man named Paul Leslie Howard is now the first to be convicted of a crime involving Silk Road, the Mos Eisley of the Internet. Mr. Howard copped to importing hard drugs using the site, and he now faces as many as 25 years in prison.

But does this signal a coming crackdown?

The Silk Road aspect of the case is causing quite the stir. When Mr. Howard was arrested, local law enforcement issued an ominous press release promising they'd get anyone using the site. It seems the pearl-clutching continued as the case went to trial, as well. Aussie paper The Age says the presiding judge showed alarm at the idea of just how easy Silk Road seemed: "Any kid short of money can become a part-time drug importer."

The prosecutor also read from Mr. Howard's early posts on the site, which certainly make it sound like just about anybody can refashion himself as Omar from The Wire: "Hey guys, I'm just starting out here. I'm Aus based and only shipping to Aus as not to roach on anyone's turf," he wrote, adding, "I'm keen for any tips or just some chat from you guys as I'm still learning!"

But it's not like Mr. Howard was convicted on the strength of his Silk Road profile alone. According to The Age, authorities first seized some of the man's drugs while in transit--through the damn mail--from the Netherlands and Germany. That was followed by a raid, in which the cops found "digital scales, clip seal bags, $2300 cash, a money counter and 35 stun guns disguised as mobile phones."

The police also got two mobile phones with more than 20,000 text messages, which said things like: "I got 5 grand worth if you want", " ... promote the LSD I got more in. I sold 200 cubes last week" and "no cubes left atm but some other 'things' u might like!"

Yeah, the prosecutor probably didn't have to pull any all-nighters on this one. We suspect this is less the sign of a coming crackdown than a reminder of a) why you shouldn't have drugs shipped to your house and b) all the ways in which Weeds was unrealistic.

Nonetheless, it's worth noting that here in the U.S., the DEA is well aware of the site's existence and investigating. So don't do anything dumb, okay?

A hypothetical Silk Road customer. (Getty Images)

Australian authorities have put supposedly anonymized users surfing Silk Road for weed and other sundries on notice: the coppers are one step ahead of you. A joint press release published by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian Customs and Border Protection Service on Wednesday may serve as notice to anyone who is happily booting TOR and using the miracle of the Internet to score weapons-grade kush:

Silk Road is an overseas based illicit e-commerce website which facilitates the sale of drugs, weapons and other items prohibited under Australian law.

Law enforcement is well aware of this method of drug procurement and other illicit e-commerce platforms and are committed to identifying and combating users importing narcotics via this website into Australia.

This warning comes after a Melbourne resident was snagged for allegedly using Silk Road to transport unspecified narcotics into the country.

The most interesting part of the release might be a quote from customs official Alana Sullivan, who said, "Persons who buy or sell through online market places, on so-called 'anonymous' networks should understand that they are not guaranteed anonymity."

Ms. Sullivan's words may be a splash of cold water in the faces of  TOR users and Silk Road consumers around the world, or at least in the United States and Europe. If Aussie cops know where your Bitcoins go, who is to say American or European authorities are in the dark?

Cookies, or drugs? (wikipedia.org)

No publicity is bad publicity: Silk Road, the illicit online marketplace that came to light after Gawker's Adrian Chen announced you could buy any drug imaginable there with Bitcoins, has been booming after increased awareness due to a rash of alarmist press coverage.

Drugs! Anonymous currencies! Hackers! Our children! But gradually Silk Road, and to a lesser degree Bitcoin, faded from the stage, largely because most people couldn't understand how to use them. Silk Road can only be accessed using the anonymous network Tor, and you should probably know a thing or two about encryption before you buy anything. 

But as we learn via a few Bitcoining Betabeat readers, Silk Road is doing really well—well enough to expand its anonymous team. "Silk Road is currently hiring a database expert and a customer support team member," writes one readers. "On top of the ordinary 'describe your background and expertise' and 'why do you want to join us' questions, they're asking for the applicant's drug of choice."

The ad, at http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/index.php/silkroad/careers:

"Silk Road is hiring! Want to work on the cutting edge of online  anonymity and security? Want to contribute to an ever growing community? Do you want to be a part of this Revolution? If you think you have what it takes, please apply to one of the positions below."

Betabeat was swamped yesterday, so we tried to get Mr. Chen to do a follow-up. "I was last on SR like two weeks ago, and it definitely was booming," he said on Gchat. "The interface was much improved." But the blogger must have been too busy with epic features to look into Silk Road: Careers. So, drug-addled unemployed database experts and customer support team members, consider this a public service announcement. Let us know if you hear anything about compensation.

GUNS AND STEEL. Remember Silk Road, the website with an absurdly-long URL where you can buy drugs and other wonderful things with Bitcoin, and lots of its harmless customers gave quotes to Gawker? There's a similar underground site that's a little more ominous, a source tells Betabeat. It's called Metal Storm--another common name that makes it tough to find by a search--and senators might want to pay more attention to this one, because it sells guns.

GROUPME'S MILLIONS. Betabeat reported that Skype payed "more than $50 million" (and 47 signed Taylor Swift CDs!) for GroupMe, a figure we confirmed with two sources close to the company. But later All Things D reported $85 million and the blogosphere ran with it. Welp, we figured, that is more than $50 mm. But now TechCrunch king Mike Arrington, who's been historically possessive of news around the start-up born at his own hackathon, is saying something different in a post titled "What Skype Really Paid for Groupme." Well. "Our sources close to the companies say the initial payment for GroupMe is $43 million, and deferred payments (or an earnout) can get the GroupMe shareholders as much as $68 million over four years. The founders will receive another few million dollars as part of their long term employment agreements."

But here's the fun part. "As an aside, when we add estimated acquisition prices to CrunchBase, we usually put in the higher number instead of a range. I like being optimistic, and we can always edit it downward later if new information becomes available."

SEED-STAGE SLAUGHTER. Blind item! What mommy-centric group-buying start-up with a New York founder just acquired another mommy-centric group-buying start-up based in Manhattan?

NEW THING. Forrst founder Kyle Bragger has a new start-up and it's "now finished enough to start using it for real." The site is password-protected, and so far the Twitter account is mum.

REPUTATION MANAGEMENT. Real-time mini-gig sites like Coffee & Power, Fiverr, Zaarly and the grand-daddy Craigslist are fueling the market for fake reviews on Yelp, Google Places, and even Foursquare. "My team will write 6, 5-star, KEYWORD reviews of your business or website listed on Google Maps reviews. All reviews 5 star. These are very postive reviews, saying great things about your listing. Not only will these reviews help get on page one in Google Maps, but they will help you tremendously to make sales. They serve as testimonials as well as sales pages at the same time. One paragraph long. Up to 60 reviews per listing available. No adult."

#BITCOIN-RUMORS. The mystery of the epic MyBitcoin whodunnit continues, although energy is flagging among the Bitcoin community. Word on the street is, MyBitcoin.com may have some connection to that most underground of ecommerce, the website where you can OMG buy drugs known as the Silk Road, which would give the owners another motive to build the easy-to-use wallet service in order to make it easy to get Bitcoin to spend on weed and mushies. Betabeat called our local Federal Bureau of Investigation today to file a complaint and find out if there was an investigation ongoing. "I'm sorry, I can't help you on this," a press representative said, declining to either confirm or deny whether the FBI was looking into the matter.

THE TIME IS ALWAYS NOW. Is capital drying up? The companies out of DreamIt Ventures--which gave life to one of New York's favorite little revenue-generating ventures, SeatGeek--had a demo day a fraction of the size of TechStars's and the companies have had oh, less success? Raising money? In the wake of the TechStars demo day, Betabeat remembers stories of rounds so full the founders had to subscribe them twice. Only 14 of the 15 DreamIt start-ups presented. "Appbrick and Cognection, not doing so hot," a source says. "Prepfly didn't present." And Pictour found itself scooped by Foursquare's lists feature weeks after their pivot. Then again, some companies are doing well--1DocWay's got all the money they need, we hear. Remember, you can't spell "pivot" without "tip," er, whatever. Talk to us.

THE EVERY-HOUR BODY. Every hour, a bell goes off in the SinglePlatform office, indicating the time to drop and give CEO Wiley Cerelli 20. Well not really, says the start-up's rather buff Chief Fitness Officer, who used to be a division 1 wrestler at Syracuse, the push-ups are optional. Is there a push-up competition in the works between SinglePlatform and the muscle builders at Kohort? We're hearing yes! Fitocracy might want to get in on this.

"Literally, it allows buyers and users to sell illegal drugs online, including heroin, cocaine, and meth, and users do sell by hiding their identities through a program that makes them virtually untraceable," New York Senator Chuck Schumer said at a news conference Sunday.  He wants Silk Road, a website where users can purchase drugs using bitcoin, shut down immediately.

The simple truth is that bitcoin does lend itself to this kind of transaction, but was certainly not designed to facilitate money laundering or online drug abuse. Sadly, most of the public was introduced to bitcoin through Adrian Chen, the Gawker scribe who spotlighted Silk Road. "Making small talk with your pot dealer sucks. Buying cocaine can get you shot. What if you could buy and sell drugs online like books or light bulbs? Now you can: Welcome to Silk Road."

"It's a certifiable one-stop shop for illegal drugs that represents the most brazen attempt to peddle drugs online that we have ever seen. It's more brazen than anything else by lightyears."

Bitcoin is a digital peer-to-peer currency currently trading at about $9 to one bitcoin. Schumer described the process of converting dollars to bitcoins as, "An online form of money laundering used to disguise the source of money, and to disguise who's both selling and buying the drug."

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