Naptime!

Sundancing in the Dark South by Southwest is basically right around the corner, but it seems several techies needed a break before March offers the excuse for a tax-deductible trip to Austin. Investor Scooter Braun is be there (for obvious reasons), as is VHX cofounder Casey Pugh, ABC News's Maya Baratz, onetime Myspace prez Jason Hirschhorn, and Thrillist cofounder Ben Lerer. Judging from Mr. Lerer's Instagram, Gary Vaynerchuk is also along for the ride.

Startups are taking advantage of the festival's halo of hipness. The creatives at Kickstarter have devoted a page to Sundance entrants funded on the platform, and cofounder Yancey Strickler says he'll be in attendance. Uber will be there--and handing out hot chocolate. "All you have to do is tap the Uber app and we will come wherever you are to deliver sweet salvation from the epic cold," the company promises. Not to mention helping sooth the pain of Uber's high fares.

Two of the cast members of "Start-ups: Silicon Valley," Hermione Way and Marcus Lovingood, are in Park City and hosting something called Hollywood Meets Silicon Valley. In case you'd like a reminder of why people sell out for reality TV, here is the view from their window, as tweeted by Mr. Lovingood:

Popcorny Lest anyone get the idea Mr. Lerer is all high-minded indie films, all the the time, we'd like to point out this little admission via Twitter: "I sorta want to see Hansel & Gretel Witch Hunters (I understand this makes me a stupid and bad person)."

Don't Kiss, Do Tell Speaking of Ms. Way, it seems she's still a tad confused by the concept of "discretion." To recap: Earlier this month, she was caught in a hottub on Necker Island with several people, including her host Sir Richard Branson and One Direction's Harry Styles, fresh off his breakup with Taylor Swift. Naturally, at least one tab came calling, checkbook at the ready, but Ms. Way turned the offer down. She explained in a lengthy Facebook note that she couldn't bring herself to violate the privacy of her fellow guests on Necker Island, who were very high profile, you see.

Well, it seems Ms. Way has decided releasing just a few more details won't hurt. She's now written a piece about her week-long visit for the Next Web, promoted on her Facebook with the teasing title, "What really happened on Necker." Did she mention the quality time spent with famous entrepreneur Richard Branson?

The week was jam-packed with activities on Necker including morning tennis tournaments with Richard Branson, kite races to Anagada and yacht racing.

Has anyone ever been this smug about not making out with a pop star?

Corrections for $2,000, Alex? Foursquare made its third appearance on “Jeopardy,” this week. According to cofounder Dennis Crowley’s Instagram of the blessed event, the app-savvy woman guessed correctly and went on to win $40,000 that night. As Mr. Crowley pointed out, Alex Trebek’s prompt was actually 1 billion check-ins behind Foursquare’s current totals. “Gowalla,” one Instagram commenter guessed facetiously--name-checking the Foursquare competitor that was acquired by Facebook and then shuttered last year. Considering the recent PrivCo report that Foursquare will be acquired for less than it raised by the end of 2013, you might want to watch the schadenfreude.

Now You Know "What is the plural of Sex on a Beach?" angel investor and Tumblrer Rick Webb recently wondered aloud to himself on Twitter (as one does). Luckily, GroupMe cofounder Steve Martocci was ready with a riposte: "It is plural, masterbate on the beach is the singular." And there you have it.

GIF Out of Here Buzzfeed is hiring an intern to run the company Tumblr. In keeping with the tech world's slouch toward goofy-ass job listings, the announcement asks, "Can you make an animated GIF of Joe Biden drinking a beer with a red panda?" If so, running Buzzfeed's Tumblr might be literally the only job in the world for which you are ideally suited, you crazy diamond.

Sartorial Corner Don’t get it twisted: In the wake of Michelle Obama’s bold new haircut, AllThingsD’s scoop mistress general Kara Swisher would like everyone to be aware that she, Kara Swisher, does not have bangs. “Side sweep. Never bangs, despite my mother’s best efforts at various D conferences where she got hairdresser under her thumb,” she tweeted in response to someone who suggested otherwise.

Who are you gonna believe, the fine-feathered Ms. Swisher or your lying eyes?

twitter.com/ystrickler

Still waiting around for some sort of weird tchotchke you backed months ago on Kickstarter? Well, at least you've got company. In a big, expansive package released today, CNN Money crunched the numbers and found that of the 50 most-funded projects in the platform's history, 84 percent were late. A mere eight were delivered on time.

Youch. And how much sympathy does cofounder Yancy Strickler have for your discontent? Well, here's what he told CNN Money:

"If you want a watch, you can go buy a watch," Strickler says. "People turn to the analogs of consumer behavior, as if this is a Wal-Mart online store. Kickstarter isn't a perfect analog to anything like that. It's something new."

Guess you're going to have to live another day without that cocktail shaker made of typewriter parts!

CNN Money's findings are even starker than those from a study released earlier this year, which examined a wider array of projects and concluded that 75 percent don't make their delivery date. But there's a very simple explanation for the difference and for the high rates of tardiness, one best articulated by the late, great Biggie Smalls: More money, more problems. Dreamers with jack shit in the way of operational knowledge cook up some snazzy idea, then suddenly they have to produce far more product than they anticipated.

Thus far, Kickstarter has handled this situation by reminding everyone that all transactions are between project creators and backers, and the site is just a venue. A September blog post attempted to remind everyone that the site "is not a store."

And last night, on the eve of the CNN Money story, Mr. Strickler and company have released yet another, more philosophical post on the matter: "Is lateness failure?" Betcha can't guess the answer:

Kickstarter projects are great at a lot of things, but meeting deadlines isn’t one of them. This isn’t just a Kickstarter thing. All creative projects, whether they’re on Kickstarter or not, often take longer than expected. What’s unique about Kickstarter is that everyone gets to see how things are made and exactly how long it takes to make them.

Tl;dr translation: This is art! You can't rush art! You don't want to be Pope Julius the II, standing over Michelangelo like an asshole, do you?

The post also points out a neglected data point from that UPenn study: Only 3.6 percent of projects totally failed to materialize, which is pretty impressive, all things considered.

But there is one consolation: Feel free to make as much fun of the site as you want. Hell, Kickstarter knows it's an easy punchline. Here's what Mr. Strickler told CNN Money when they brought up a Portlandia sketch poking fun at the site and its population of wannabe artistes:

"It's not just 'Portlandia,'" Strickler says proudly. "We were also in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, The Onion, 'The Daily Show.' Everyone had a Kickstarter joke this year. We're very mockable."

Mr. Strickler, your trollface is showing.

(Photo: Vanity Fair)

Annie Leibovitz's Silicon Alley photo shoot has finally made its way into print, as part of Vanity Fair’s annual "New Establishment" list. As we'd hoped, the magazine opted to pose Arianna Huffington in the sidecar of David Karp’s vintage motorcycle. (Guest appearance by Mr. Karp's "French-English bulldog," Clark.) Only in the version that made the October issue, Dennis Crowley is depicted emerging from a manhole, avec le swag. As before, the annual list is chockablock with tech types, but just like last year, Silicon Valley dominates.

Peter Thiel comes in at no. 37, repping for libertarian utopias between Tyler Perry and Ryan Seacrest. Elon Musk is no. 9 on the list, two rungs higher than Adele, but one spot below a new entrant: Pinterest's Ben Silberman, no. 8. Despite Square's caffeine-fueled growth, Jack Dorsey stayed at the no. 5 spot, but finally got the fashion props he's been waiting for. "It’s a Prada suit; for everyday wear, it’s denim from Scott Morrison’s Earnest Sewn line, which was the first brand to use Twitter."

Scattered among the elite are a handful of New York techies, present and accounted for. By and large, it's the same group of people as last October, although it's interesting to note how Vanity Fair assesses their power ranking, year-over-year.

Herb Allen III, Allen & Co.: Mr. Allen, one of the underwriters for Facebook's contentious IPO, moved up one spot from no. 19 to no. 18. "Managed to stay under the radar as Morgan Stanley took the blame for the bungled offering."

Sean Parker, entrepreneur: Last year, the owner of Bacchus House in the West Village came in at no. 34. This year, he's off the list entirely. A critique of Airtime's ho-hum adoption rates, perhaps?

Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures, Flatiron Partners: Mr. Wilson is moving up in the world--and fast! He jumped from no. 35 last year to no. 23, outranking fellow tech investor Ashton Kutcher (no. 25), if you can believe that.

Dennis Crowley, Foursquare: Mr. Manhole Crowley dropped four places from no. 45 to no. 49. C'mon, doesn't a Best Buy commercial during the Olympics count for anything these days? Vanity Fair pegs Naveen Selvadurai's recent de-foundering as a "power play."

Kevin Ryan, Gilt Groupe, Business Insider: The DoubleClick alum, recently profiled in The New York Times for AlleyCorp's stable of winners, moves up from no. 46 last year to no. 42, with a nod to Gilt Groupe's impending IPO.

Henry Blodget, Business Insider: Mr. Blodget, your caps lock key's best friend, fell off the list this year, from 2011's perch at no. 48. That's okay, he'll keep advising Facebook from the side.

David Karp, Tumblr: Consider this Mr. Karp's coming out party. Last year, the 26-year-old was relegated to the magazine's "Next Establishment" list. But this year, he debuted at no. 44, just behind Lena Dunham (no. 43) despite Tumblr's influence among navel-gazing millenials.

(Photo: Vanity Fair)

Honorable Mention: Perry Chen, Charles Adler and Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter. The crowdfunders didn't make the list, but they did get a get a brief profile in the issue--and a chance to model some well-cut skinny suits. Vanity Fair gives the cofounders, recently scuffed up in the press for overfunded projects' failure to deliver, a shout out for creating "a new product category: the indie gadget." By this time next year, we predict they'll be hovering around no. 45 for ushering in the resurgence of hardware.

Basically. (Photo: flickr.com/benhusmann)

A series of stumbles--dead jellyfish, burned sandals, iffy iPod docks--has Kickstarter backers wondering whether there's any recourse when they bet on projects that just don't pan on. Their discontent finally bubbled up to NPR, which politely requested some answers yesterday. And so today, the Kickstarter cofounders--Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler--took to the company blog to clarify a few things, with a post titled "Accountability on Kickstarter."

That mason jar desk lamp hasn't show up? The brainwave-scanning iPhone accessory not working quite right? Concerned that brilliant poet has taken off to Tahiti with your donation? Sorry, Charlie. It's not Kickstarter's responsibility to make you whole:

If the problems are severe enough that the creator can't fulfill their project, creators need to find a resolution. Steps could include offering refunds, detailing exactly how funds were used, and other actions to satisfy backers.

Not clear enough? Kickstarter does not, cannot, and will not give your money back:

Kickstarter doesn't issue refunds, as transactions are between backers and the creator. In fact, Kickstarter never has the funds at all. When a project is successfully funded, money is transferred directly from backers' credit cards to the project creator's Amazon Payments account. It's up to the creator to issue a refund, which they can do through their Amazon Payments account.

Why won't Kickstarter give you money back? Well, it's just part and parcel of offering a less risk-averse alternative to traditional channels for creative work, like movie studios and publishing houses:

The pursuit of these projects with a guarantee doesn't work. A Kickstarter where every project is guaranteed would be the same safe bets and retreads we see everywhere else. The fact that Kickstarter allows creators to take risks and attempt to create something ambitious is a feature, not a bug.

Of course, the problem with that scenario is sometimes your grand ambition turns out to be a punchline--just ask the producers of Xanadu.

Ms. He's sign

On a mild, sun-dappled Sunday, Betabeat applied our sunscreen and ventured to the Long Meadow in Prospect Park for an event aptly named "The Internet Picnic." A few weeks ago, a friend of ours named Nicole He had won the Listserve lottery and was tasked with sending an email out to 20,000 random Internet strangers. Ms. He works in community at the crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter. "What should I write??" she frantically gChatted us, before eventually deciding to invite all 21,288 subscribers to a picnic yesterday in Brooklyn.

"I have a mole under my eye and I'll be wearing red," she wrote, and then posted the same invitation to her Tumblr, where it received almost 300 notes.

Back in April, Betabeat introduced you to The Listserve, a project out of NYU ITP that allows a different user each day to send an email to a list full of subscribers. The idea is to give one randomly chosen person daily the opportunity to expound upon whatever's important to them to a platform of over 20,000 apt listeners. "This project makes every-day people think — and talk — about the internet," one of the Listserve's cofounders, Alvin Chang, told us at the time. "It makes people aware of the medium.”

Though Mr. Chang now lives in Boston and couldn't attend the event, his comment turned out to be especially prescient. When we arrived, Ms. He had positioned a hand-painted sign that read "#internetpicnic" (hashtag included) to rest upon a memorial rock. About 50-75 people (we're terrible at estimates) were spread out on blankets across a hill at the end of the meadow, eating fruit salad and drinking beer and laughing.

Just in case you weren't entirely sure that the people at the picnic were "from the Internet," a tan and white corgi named Tartine pranced about, provoking awws as she tried to nab some of the picnic food. (For the unaware, corgis are arguably the favorite mascot of certain corners of the Internet.) We wondered how many BuzzFeed posts Tartine might inspire.

All of the attendees at the picnic appeared to be under 35 and most of them worked on the Internet for a living. Many lived in New York, but a fair amount came down to the city just for the event. A couple of Yale computer science students who had traveled from New Haven took up residence on the extra space we had on our blanket. A guy throwing a frisbee around said he had come from Maryland. The youngest attendee was a 15-year-old boy, sporting the accessory so common among teens that age: a full set of braces. He was visiting from San Diego, and had heard about The Listserve through Twitter.

Tartine the corgi

But the majority of attendees worked in tech in New York: we spotted employees from Kickstarter (including cofounder Yancey Strickler), Foursquare, Etsy, Tumblr, Timehop, AppNexus and ScrollKit. It was basically a New York Tech Meetup, but with more pie.

John Skylar, a scientist with an organization called Better Worlds, introduced himself to us. Mr. Skylar also moonlights as a sci fi writer and asked that we use his pen name. We asked him why he decided to spend his Sunday afternoon fraternizing with Internet strangers. "Besides a general spirit of adventure, I run a lot of events geared towards getting people to talk to each other, and I was like, 'Hey, I could have discourse in real life!'" he said.

Next to us, we heard a snippet of conversation: "Troll has such a dirty connotation." Another person behind us was saying, "I blocked Henry Blodget on Twitter." The sun grazed the trees and began to spoil the fruit that was splayed out on blankets that had been abandoned for a group game of Cards Against Humanity, which--yes--was a successfully funded Kickstarter project. We also detected a hint of weed in the air, but it could've been coming from the cricket players across the lawn.

The Listserve's creators, minus Mr. Chang, also made an appearance. "It's pretty phenomenal," Zena Koo told Betabeat. "I wasn't sure how many people would come, but it's nice to see how many people actually showed up. I think The Listserve attracts a lot of people yearning to have conversations online, so this is the perfect evolution of all that coming together full circle."

"This whole thing keeps surprising me every day," added Greg Dorsainville, another Listserve cofounder.

A couple hours into the festivities.

Mr. Dorsainville and his fourth cofounder, Josh Begley, told us that they've never had to censor an email, except for a spammy one that broke the terms of service. Though, many Listserve emails do have a similar theme: "Everyone turns into Deepak Chopra," quipped Mr. Begley.

Behind him, someone started playing "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid on an acoustic guitar. A startup cofounder with a Dali mustache joined our circle and asked us what low-cost superpower we would have, if we could choose. We picked the power to have the subway arrive at the exact moment we hit the platform, every single day. A guy from AppNexus said he wanted the ability to never burn his food.

The acoustic guitar wasn't the only instrument to make an appearance. Ms. He had brought her ukulele, but demurred when we asked her to serenade us. As a girl began to play Gotye on an accordion, and people began to fold up their blankets, we decided it might be time to take our leave. We hugged Ms. He goodbye.

"See you on gChat!" she called, as we headed back, sun-tired and socially drained, towards the F train. A long night of socializing--on the Internet, naturally--lay ahead of us.

(Photo: The Kickback Machine)

A healthy chunk of criticism has been lobbed at crowdfunding platform Kickstarter for using a search algorithm which "hides" failed projects. If you want to learn from projects that didn't quite meet their funding goal, you'd be hard-pressed to do so on Kickstarter itself--failed projects are only available directly through a creator's profile.

"This isn’t to ‘hide failure'...it’s because it would be a poor user experience (there’s no action that anyone could take) and it would expose the creators of unsuccessfully funded projects to unnecessary criticism from the web," Kickstarter's cofounder Yancey Strickler told TechCrunch back in May.

Of course, when you're attempting to stage a successful campaign, it's only natural that you'd want to do your research and find out which projects similar to yours have already failed. Enter The Kickback Machine, a project by tech journalist Dan Misener that surfaces and sorts failed (and successful) projects by genre.

According to the site:

The KickBack Machine is a research tool. It's designed to help artists, creators, and entrepreneurs do their crowdfunding homework. Before you launch your own Kickstarter campaign, it's important to research past projects, so you can understand what works and what doesn't. Kickstarter's website does a good job of helping you find past successes. But it can be very difficult to find past projects that failed to meet their funding goal. The KickBack Machine allows you to browse past successes and failures to help you better plan your own campaign.

Kickstarter claims it also doesn't show failed projects because they would be indexed high in Google search results, which could be a real pain point for a creator. If The Kickback Machine doesn't list the failed projects in search, we can't see why Kickstarter would have a problem with it.

We've reached out to them and will update when we hear back.

But it will no longer be necessary to wait for the company's sporadic memos. Kickstarter cofounder Yancey Strickler just announced a live stats page that will let anyone see the numbers surrounding different projects. The page will display information like total dollars pledged and success rate per category, updated once a day.

"We've always wanted a way to share our numbers consistently," Mr. Strickler writes. Like Facebook's stats page, the move will be good for fending off journalists who want updated numbers on a fast-growing company. For reference, Kickstarter's launched 60,754 projects, of which 24,984 have been successful. (Hey, this should also help speed up those sensationalist infographics.) Additionally, $261 million have been pledged to all projects, which includes $27 million in "unsuccessful dollars," which are dollars pledged to startups that never hit the tipping point.

The company has been more transparent with the numbers than some of its crowdfunding competitors—sharing stats in its annual reports or breaking down the effect of blockbuster projects—like Pebble the smartwatch or the videogame Double Fine Adventure. But with the brave new world of crowdinvesting poised to take off, the more public data, the better.

Image via Harrlee on Instagram

The crowds of young hipsters were packed in to the rafters at the Mason Temple in Fort Greene last night. They had come for a screening of Girl Walk // All Day, an epic musical across New York City, which was having its debut as a dance party thrown in partnership with their crowd funding platform, Kickstarter. 

"This project launched back in January hoping to raise $5,000 and ended up with four times that," Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler said, grabbing the microphone onstage. "The shooting took place all around the city, often illegally." The crowd roared its appreciation. "This is the part where they tell you to turn off your cell phones and stay quiet, but that's not quiet how we do things. Let's Instagram the hell out of this and dance our asses off."

Betabeat grabbed a beer and swung by the Kickstarter merch table. We got a fist bump from Aviary's Michael Galpert, who was preparing to sweat it out. Was there any other tech scene in the world where the visuals are brought to you by the Joshua Light Show? It was that unique combination of art and science that Silicon Alley seems to specialize in. Expect more in the future, with Kickstarter hiring a full time film maker (along with Ruby engineers and data scientists, natch).

A few more photos from last night:

Instagram via YourPalMal

Instagram via eqx1979

Not only is the amount of money going through Kickstarter increasing, but the company is taking a hard look at the data from all this activity and figuring out ways to help more projects be successful, a win win for both the company and its users.

There is a lot more great info and insight from co-founder Yancey Strickler in this video, which comes from a talk he gave as part of the CreativeMornings/NewYork series at the Galapagos Art Space.

2011/06 Yancey Strickler from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.