Medium (Screengrab)

BuzzFeed's FWD tech blog has stepped forward to answer one of the most burning questions of our time: where do you find white guys on the Internet? As a service to the caucasian XY-deprived populace, FWD focuses its survey on three somewhat similar bloggy or social networking-related start-ups: Svbtle, Medium and App.net:

How white and male is the early-adopter crowd? As it turns out, quite. White males make up 81 percent of the users at Svbtle, 88 percent of users at App.net, and 61 percent of users at Medium. It appears that Medium is somewhat more diverse than the other two platforms. It's important to note, however, that Medium is the youngest of the three, and has the smallest pool of beta users as well, so the data is less statistically significant.

Contributor Benjamin Jackson writes that the data confirms "the stereotype of the white male-dominated tech industry" and that first adopters of sites like App.net are indeed "often influential [...] tech leaders based in and around New York and the Bay Area."

We kid, but the survey makes striking point about techie concentrations of dudes with--as FWD defines it--"a visibly white complexion." Or, in the case of App.net, men with visibly white complexions and $50.

Start your engine(ers):

Dear Prof. Harris - There seem to be a ton of new tech incubators and accelerators opening up. How do I know if one of these programs is right for me and which one will be the best fit?

Sincerely, Freshman Founder

Dear Virgin Founder,

Business is really about integrity. Building it, maintaining it and guarding it. As you get more established (older) things get more complicated and lines get blurred, a story I'll save for another time.

I grew up watching Mike Bloomberg build and grow his business in this manner. It was truly impressive watching him (from afar) conduct his business affairs over the years.  Of course, as a politician, he has my respect, but no longer my admiration --the third term monkey business was about him and his hubris and not about NYC. So Mikey the politician of course promotes technology incubators but Mike Bloomberg the businessman thinks otherwise. He knows the necessity of keeping an iron fist in the velvet glove: a warm, diplomatic face in public, but tight control on staff and the daily business at hand.

Specifically,  the problem with working in the context of an incubator is that a multitude of energies are pulling at you and your staff. It is sort of like being in an open sexual relationship (it can work but it adds an extra layer or three of difficulty over the long haul). Here a few commonly spread incubator diseases:

• Zero Sum Game Syndrome: Another company actually starts getting traction so you (and more critically your staff) wonder what you are doing wrong.
• Dead Egg Decay: Let’s face it most companies don’t hatch. Failure is contagious.
• Behind Closed Doors. Business is a form of intimacy and your staff needs to develop a bond in order to compete in the world as a unified organism.
• Unprotected Intercourse: Why expose the lovely lady (your best geek programmer)?
• Cheating on Your Business. Your crew starts helping other chicks in the incubator (even in good faith) with their business (denuding the balls to the walls, 24/7 get it done at all costs, culture you need to engender).

Wear the Glove

Don’t get me wrong. Under the right conditions incubators and accelerators can work, so long as you wear the velvet glove. Keep your fist tight and get your own office space as soon as is prudent. Remember that letting your guard down even just once can expose your company to life threatening social media diseases.

From Flickr user Robert Scoble

Tom Formesky bills himself as the first journalist to leave a major newspaper to make a living as full time blogger. Today he penned a lengthy post about the need for neutral coverage of tech start-ups, admonishing without ever directly naming TechCrunch editor Mike Arrington, who has decided to begin investing in the companies he covers, again. 

The way Formesky sees it, this is an issue that effects the greater good of society. "If its rival startup has a financial connection with an editor or reporter, then it doesn’t matter if it has a better product, or a better technology, and that means it might never receive the media coverage it deserves. It might not succeed at all. And that’s a loss. It’s a potentially a large loss for the world, too, if the startup has an important technology that could be widely applied."

The truth is almost all the blog style coverage of start-ups has been conflicted from the beginning. Arrington was an investor before he was a blogger, stopped for a while, and has now started up again. Business Insider is funded by folks like Kevin Ryan and RRE, who have financial interests across dozens of companies on both coasts. GigaOm raises funds from True Ventures, where blog founder Om Malik is a partner. Betabeat has backing from Jared and Josh Kushner, who invest in start-ups through Thrive Capital.

The situation is further complicated by competitions like TechCrunch Disrupt, which create a feedback loop of hype, funding and coverage.

The truth is that the biggest and most important investors don't make their decisions based on what they read on blogs. And while a mention on TechCrunch might drive early subscriptions to a service, no amount of coverage will be enough to build a business on top of. Twitter had plenty of doubters at all the top tech blogs when it first launched. And esoteric companies like Palantir are reaching billion dollar valuations without much press.

It's worth pointing out that Arrington only offered his most recent disclosure after pressure from rival blogger/reporter Kara Swisher. That doesn't speak well to his personal ethics. Luckily modern readers are well aware that blogs mix opinion with reporting. In the battle between consumer facing services in crowded markets, good coverage can certainly be an edge, but great ideas and execution are what counts in the end.

"What went wrong with tech, it became about fashion, not value," Diamond wrote, before posting a link to this ad for AirBnB featuring a fetching hipster spokeswoman.

Nate Westheimer pinged him back to ask, "How so? Tech is still tech," and with that, a full fledged Twitter debate had begun.

"The determinant of a product's success is less its quality, more its sex appeal."

"How do you measure quality?" Westheimer counters.

Like all things in life, a certain amount of sex appeal helps products along. Millions of consumers have voted for the iPhone, despite its long record of less than stellar service as a device for making phone calls, in large part because of its aesthetic qualities. Start-ups are the same, and that rule applies to everything from the UX to the founder's personal magnetism.

"Perhaps what I'm lamenting is the maturation of the free web," Diamond wrote to Betabeat over an afternoon gchat. "The emphasis has shifted from the product to the user which -- incidentally -- is a good thing. I think there are good things and bad things about it; certainly more money to be made but when image surpasses more concrete measurements of value I think that's a dangerous thing and in the case of certain popular startups, I think image drives a lot more than what we freely admit."

Jacob Brody—entrepreneur and former reporter for VentureBeat—is heading to boutique investment bank Mesa as the new head of Business and Community Development. That's a fancy way of saying digital A&R, which means Brody won't have to change much about his daily routine. "My job is to augment Mesa's connections in the digital world so that we can find great companies and help them build their businesses before other investment banks even know about them," said Brody.

The new position is a reflection of the boom in New York's tech scene. "There have been a wave of new seed funds and that means a lot more activity to keep an eye on," said Mark Patricof, a managing partner at Mesa. "Jacob is an entrepreneur, so he's empathetic to young companies. He can naviagte their networks and create an ongoing dialouge with founders."

Brody will offer his services free of charge to promising start-ups. "I'm out there helping these companies with biz dev, with PR, with product. If I like and believe in an entrepreneur, I'm going to help them build their business anyway I can," Brody told The Observer.

It's a similar idea to the entrepreneur in residence, a point man who can speak the start-up's language. "When these companies become more mature and start looking for banking relationships, we’ll be in a good position," said Patricof.

Brody will continue to work on his company, the non-profit Standard Start, and plans to launch a version 2.0 soon. In the meantime, he'll be getting up a little earlier in the morning and enjoying a few perks rare in the start-up world. "I love health insurance," Brody told The Observer.

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper