(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.

Map-maker, Map-maker, Build Me a Map! If Tim Cook's mea culpa wasn't enough to demonstrate how hard Apple is scrambling to fix its iOS 6 mapocalypse, then how about its last ditch recruiting techniques to find Ruby developers? Mojo Talantikite, a cluster engineer at Engine Yard in New York City, said he (and a number of his technically talented friends) have been hit up by Apple recruiters recently.

The recruiter's LinkedIn inquiry mentions "Maps" specifically:

"We are looking for a passionate Ruby coder to have a HUGE impact our Maps, Flyover, Geo and Siri teams in iOS. I've read about your work on Heroku's infrastructure. Is it a good time for you to chat?"

My, What Colorful Balls You Have Startup perks tend to veer toward the infantile. Between the snacks, slides, and nap pods, managers might as well try to wipe your nose when you sneeze. But newly-married Elepath founder Jakob Lodwick actually committed, procuring the ball pool of your childhood dreams for Elepath's San Francisco "studio." At least that's what we thought based on his recent Instagram offering. However, on closer inspection, an antimated gif from Elepath's blog reveals the ball pool is less Chuck E. Cheese and more kiddie pool. Things on the Internet, it seems, may be smaller than they appear.

Cussing For a Cause Last week Tech4Obama hosted an evening in New York with serial entrepreneur and current CTO for Obama for America Harper Reed. Next to the guest list--heavily studded with Silicon Alley stalwarts like Soraya Darabi, Rachel Sklar, and Betaworks' Andrew McLaughlin and investor Pedro Torres Picon--the invitation loudly warned "THIS EVENT IS CLOSED TO PRESS." Now we know why. Apparently the bearded Mr. Reed has quite the mouth on him. But doesn't he know reporters love that shit?

Colorblind We're still not really sure what Color was launched to do, but it got $40 million in funding to do it. The app subsequently became the archetypal overfunded startup representing tech's hype bubble (even inspiring a fake pitch deck!). Color treaded in the wave pool for a bit before pivoting to a new idea altogether.

Now, TechCrunch reports that Color may be experiencing an executive level shakeup, with sources saying CEO Bill Nguyen will be taking a step back from from day-to-day operations at the flailing company. In his stead, an "executive committee" has been assembled to take over his responsibilities.

Mr. Nguyen apparently hasn't shown up to the office in two months, leading sources to conjecture that he's "probably either in Tahoe or Hawaii.” (Ugh.) An ominous Quora post from January of this year wondered why Color had shuttered its Palo Alto office, but CNET journalist Casey Newton responded that the company said they'd "hung some paper up to cover its windows while they do some work inside." Hmm, engineers do have some weird working habits.

Of course, a question about why Mr. Nguyen left Color immediately cropped up on Quora and was quickly answered with a cringe-worthy response. "After the disastrous pivot from the initial (fairly brilliant, but poorly implemented) photo sharing concept, it was really only a matter of 'Nguyen, not if'."

Sigh.

Digging K-Pop Looks like Digg cofounder Kevin Rose is officially a fan of the "Gangnam Style" hype. Mr. Rose posted a photo on his Instagram of a little bobble head Psy doing the infamous horse dance, sharing a photo of his Psy laptop decal shortly after. Try to ignore the awkward comment about "open condom style," below.

(Photo: Instagram)

Business Tattler Henry Blodget proudly outed Verge's editor-in-chief today, tweeting, "Josh Topolsky reads Business Insider!" But the real question is: does he hate read it?

As always: 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

Peter Stern, Bitly's CEO (linkedin.com)

UPDATE 5/17: Bitly CEO Peter Stern reached out to Betabeat Thursday to dispute much of what was reported in The Verge yesterday. "While I would be delighted to report that we raised a significant amount of money, I’m not in a position to report that just yet," said Mr. Stern, who did acknowledge that he is in the process of raising funds, but said that has been true since he started his tenure as CEO. The company raised a $1.4 million convertible note in March.

Mr. Stern said Bitly is at work on a consumer product, but the company is not yet willing to discuss it. Last October, Bitly blogged about developing a real-time search engine that lets the company "see into the future." However, Mr. Stern said, "A Bitly revamp is in the works, but it doesn’t include a viral search, which is only available for business customers."

Link shortening service Bitly is moving up and out--literally and figuratively. According to The Verge, the company moved out of Betaworks' offices this week into its own space, and has also landed $20 million in new funding.

The Verge says the company:

is raising around $20 million in a new round of funding, we have learned from multiple sources. That's twice the amount the company raised in its last round, and shows a mature startup closing in on a working business model. We also hear Bitly is about to launch some new consumer products, including a real-time, viral search engine.

Despite the fact that Bitly is widely known as a link-shortening service, its main business revolves around a product that allows publishers to track link statistics across the web. Bitly has always had bigger aspirations for itself, primarily as a full-scale viral analytics platform, so the move to build a real-time, viral search engine dovetails nicely with that vision.

The Verge launched yesterday in the early a.m. without a hitch: a sleek tech news site complete with longer analysis, forums, a product database and a Q&A with insanely-popular Apple blogger John Gruber to ensure a nice inaugural traffic boost.

"For me, this was an idea that was forming for a long time," said Josh Topolsky, former Engadget editor and current editor and co-founder of the new site. The editor—Jimmy Fallon's gadget consultant and electronic musician—was getting notes from co-workers as he spoke to Betabeat this morning by phone ("26, 27 editorially-focused employees? Okay, I'm being told it's 29"). 

"I wanted to build the perfect tech site that was accessible, not like a brick wall of nerdiness, with longer form features, more reviews, more editorials, get columnists and freelancers coming in to write the in-depth stuff..." he trailed off. "To me, design is super-important."

Mr. Topolsky and the former Engadget employees who followed him to the Jim Bankoff-bankrolled venture had been squirming over the lack of resources and other obstacles that come with working as a subsidiary of Aol.

Engadget bled writers and editors after the acquisition of The Huffington Post; Mr. Topolsky actually stuck it out after his colleagues including Chris Ziegler, Paul Miller and Ross Miller ditched (all three are now working at The Verge). But with The Verge, they had a blank slate. In six months, the editorial team worked with the product designers to build a site tailored to The Verge's mission: delivering breaking gadget news, hardware reviews, tech analysis and longer-form features in a beautiful format (let's not call it sexy).

But as they built the site—figuring out what they wanted a new tech site to be with a completely blank slate, what they needed built, how the workflow would go, what it really means to give a phone an 8/10 score, and so on—the editorial team found it impossible to stay out of the news cycle. "For the past few months we’ve been working on building The Verge while we were publishing news on This Is My Next," Mr. Topolsky explained, referring to the placeholder site where the future Verge team has been publishing three or four posts a day, often scooping Engadget and getting more traffic than they ever expected. TIMN now redirects to The Verge.

"That’s actually really difficult, which we kind of learned by accident. We didn’t intend to do This Is My Next. We were all publishing on our own blogs, and we're tweeting everybody else's links, and finally we said 'this is stupid, let's just write in one place.'"

As tech becomes more mainstream, Mr. Topolsky expects The Verge's audience will too, part of why the presentation was so important.

"It's not just about great content," he said. "You gotta present content to people in a way that is beautiful, not only something they like to look at but also functional. This is something that can be combative, trying to make it beautiful and useful, but we’re striving to do both. That was one of the first conversations we had [with Mr. Bankoff]. We said, 'if we’re going to do this we have to think of it from a design standpoint, not just about content.'"

Now that The Verge is live—"the sense of relief was incredible when the site went from not being there to being there," Mr. Topolsky recalled—it immediately started doing six times TIMN's traffic numbers. With some writers based in Europe, the site's been cranking out posts 24-7. The startup tech news site is scouting for talent from editorial to video production to sales. They're also looking for new space; the team is already "crammed in" a Flatiron office they picked up as a temporary home while getting off the ground.

Any closing thoughts? we asked Mr. Topolsky, who immediately gave a shoutout to the devs. "The product team is incredible," he said. "We work really closely to them. It's a huge relief to have been working on something for 6 months, and it’s finally real."

General Assembly

FITOCRACY GOES FREEMIUM. Fitocracy, now a year old, just announced a subscription plan for $4.99 a month. Subscribers get unlockable titles, the ability to copy workouts, greater visibility in the stream and early access to new features.

YOUNG NYTM. Tonight's New York Tech Meetup will feature the annual spotlight on demos from college students and faculty. Here's the lineup: BodyJam, Commons, Grafighters, Codecademy, Lewis Dots, PlayPower, Hacker League, LoCreep, AdRunner, MidiPHON, Bluefin Labs, Upod, Imaginary Marching Band. At the 92nd Street Y. But if you go you will miss Ben Lerer talking about the story of Thrillist at General Assembly.

OH SNAP. "SNAP Interactive, a fast-growing NYC-based social media company, is proud to announce the appointment of Jon Pedersen, Sr. as Chief Financial Officer. Pedersen brings more than 15 years of corporate finance, SEC reporting, strategic planning and management experience to SNAP, having most recently served as Senior Vice President-Controller of Warner Music Group.  This is the first significant addition to the management team since SNAP was founded in 2005, increasing the company’s headcount to 32 employees, representing a 100 percent increase since last year."

BUY LOCAL. Fiesta founder Mike Dirolf is launching a new feature for his easy email listmaker, called Fiesta Custom. "It's basically a simple way for anyone to get a version of Fiesta for their own domain name. So far in beta it has proven useful for companies that need to create a lot of dynamic lists and want their own branding on the lists. We also expect it to see a lot of use in tandem with our API which is still in private beta now."

COMPETITION. The Verge, a technology-focused news blog launched by former editors of Engadget, launches officially (party Thursday!) Out of the box: Japanese supercomputers, robots, an interview with John Gruber. It's... so pretty...

XX IN TECH. "Angel investing bootcamp mobilizes women to invest US$105k in woman-led for-profit social venture! The Pipeline Fellowship trains women philanthropists to become angel investors through education, mentoring, and practice." The fellowship announced a new investment and the launch of its alumni network, Pipeline Angels.

GOING CORPORATE. General Assembly partners with American Express to host a two-day hackathon this weekend, Nov. 5th and 6th, for "small business." "The Hackathon is a kick-off event for an ongoing releationship between American Express OPEN and General Assembly, one that will aim to leverage assets of both organizations to bring new, creative approaches to educating small businesses and prepping them for success. American Express OPEN’s interest in General Assembly is the latest example of the company working with the New York startup community to innovate on behalf of small businesses."

NIGHT OWLS. New Work City's late night coworking experiment continues every Tuesday. "Join us as we crack open some beers, crank up the Turntable.fm room, and work the night away," invites the newsletter.

One of the casualties was the much-beloved Engadget Show, created and soundtracked by Mr. Topolsky and filmed in New York. But after a month-long hiatus, AOL is bringing the Engadget Show back next week, valiantly hosted by Tim Stevens and Brian Heater. The general feeling in the comments section on Engadget was not positive.

"You should probably slumber a bit longer, I was thinking when you get a host that does not put me to sleep faster then my sleeping pills," one person wrote. "I hope this edition is a fantastic re-edit of our favorite Josh Topolsky moments!" said another.

"Gone are the good ol' days of showing up at the NY Times Center and waiting outside in the long lines and talking to random folks about the site and tech," another wrote. "Now the Engadget show has come to this. Some dark room no bigger than my closet and bedroom combined with a lackluster host and co-host, a sick dog has more personality than both of them combined. Before I looked forward to the announcements, now I'm like ehh who cares."

The ex-Engadgeteers have been working out of Union Square and updating at ThisIsMyNext.com, a placeholder outlet while they prepare to launch a new blog, "The Verge" under digital publisher Jim Bankoff in the fall. The Verge already has 10,000 "likes" on Facebook.