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Facebook's Ads Are Terrible, and Always Will Be

Every day for the past week or so, upon signing into Facebook, I've been greeted by a cross-eyed baby trying to lure me into taking part in a get-rich-quick scheme having to do with Forex trading. (Word to the wise, if you see an advertisement with the word "Forex" in it, it's almost certainly some ... More >>

Lollapalooza Suspended, Resumed After Dangerous Weather Conditions

BY ERIK THOMPSON The 2012 installment of Lollapalooza has thus far brought the requisite extremes, in terms of performances and potent weather. A two-hour delay cut through the middle of Saturday's entertainment at Chicago's Grant Park, and a good many people were wishing they had just the record h ... More >>

Twitter Proves it's Just Another Corporate Weasel With No Soul

Twitter has officially entered the ranks of corporate weaseldom. This week, it suspended the account of a journalist who complained about NBC's Olympics coverage, and who tweeted the supposedly "private" e-mail account of an NBC executive. NBC, you see, is the "corporate partner" of Twitter for cove ... More >>

Facebook's E-mail Hijack Is Part of a Pattern of Arrogance

If it wasn't clear before, it should be now: Facebook doesn't think much of you. Or of me, or of any of its (supposedly) 900 million users. We are products, not customers. The customers are the people who buy the incredibly cheap, often sleazy ads that Facebook sells. The latest datapoint supportin ... More >>

Chaka Khan Goes Veganish, Raw Choco Tacos, and Eating Vegan on Food Stamps!

​ I have some of the most very exciting news for you: Chaka Khan has adopted a vegan diet! Apparently to lose weight for health reasons but I'm still excited. I love some Chaka Khan! Let's all enjoy Tell Me Something Good. If you haven't heard of Beyond Meat, you might be dead. Everyone is talk ... More >>

The Oatmeal's BearLove Saga Gets Weirder

One week ago in this space was a funny little item about how the creator of The Oatmeal comic, Matthew Inman, had raised $100,000 in response to a lawyer's demand that Inman hand over $20,000 to the lawyer's client, an awful Website called Funnyjunk.com whose users had been posting unauthorized copi ... More >>

Facebook Ads and Spam: What's the Difference?

People who don't closely follow the online media/advertising business might wonder: How can Facebook be such a great business, commanding a $100 billion valuation when it went public, when it's filled with cheesy, lowbrow ads that are just this side of spam? Those people will be glad to know that s ... More >>

Joyless Comic Strip's NYT Parody Falls Flat

There seems to be a wide and growing divide between people who appreciate healthy portions of meaty journalism and those who prefer a media diet of bite-sized snark snacks full of empty calories. In this context, "old media" outlets like The New York Times can never win, no matter what they do. Even ... More >>

The Internet Kills Babies

This is the most ridiculous thing I have read in the past week. Given that I've been reading a lot about Congress and Mitt Romney, that's really saying something. The argument, by Andrew Keen, basically (and despite Keen's ass-covering caveats) blames the Internet for Anders Behring Breivik's murder ... More >>

Seeking a Path to Riches

Oh, good. More "sharing." The mobile social-app company Path (yes, the one that found itself in the middle a big privacy controversy not long ago) announced on Monday that it had landed another $30 million in venture financing from some top-tier firms, making its total valuation $250 million. Hey, t ... More >>

Are People Finally Getting Bored with the Tech-Blog Circle Jerk?

At this point, I have to believe that all the people in the Pando Daily-TechCrunch-Uncrunched-whatever micro-universe have consciously incorporated their onanistic little circle jerk into their collective business model. You can almost picture it just that way: Michael Arrington, Sarah Lacy, MG Sieg ... More >>

WikiLeaks' Data Dump: Let's Hold Off on Pronouncing It a Dud

​If the widespread derision of WikiLeaks' latest document drop is any indication, the struggling organization might be nearing the end of its useful life. Still, the stolen e-mails it started publishing on Sunday night so far seem more interesting in general than the trove of diplomatic cables it ... More >>

Facebook Just Keeps Getting Worse

​Over the years, whenever Facebook has made changes, people have inevitably complained --  on Facebook -- about the changes Facebook made to Facebook. "I'm leaving Facebook," those people would declare, on Facebook. Of course, few of them ever actually left Facebook. Until recently, I have ... More >>

Megaupload Bust Highlights Absurdity of SOPA/PIPA

​Last week, just as two ill-conceived anti-piracy bills were disintegrating in Congress in the face of a massive online protest, the FBI, with help from foreign governments, was busting Megaupload, one of the biggest sources of pirated digital goods. The timing was interesting, though the feds s ... More >>

PandoDaily: Just What We Needed, Another Tech-News Site

​Really? Seriously? Another site devoted to technology news? Yep, 'fraid so. This one, PandoDaily, will be written by, among others, some of the people who had previously made TechCrunch so awful: Sarah Lacy (who runs it), Michael Arrington, MG Siegler, and Paul Carr. These are people who believe ... More >>

Rupert Murdoch on Twitter: Insipid and Pedestrian

​It's sort of hard to believe after all this time, but I still regularly see people making fun of Twitter as if it's just a bunch of morons saying moron things. Okay, it is mostly that when taken as a whole. But I see very little of that kind of thing because I generally don't follow morons. Twitt ... More >>

The RIAA Responds Lamely to Claims of Piracy Advocates

​TorrentFreak, a news site that basically supports illicit downloading, last week used a half-assed ISP-lookup service to conclude that employees of both the Recording Industry Association of America and the Department of Homeland Security had downloaded illicit copies of various copyrighted works ... More >>

Facebook's Cheesy Ads: Do They Make it Worth $100 Billion?

​A couple of weeks ago, Business Insider, the puerile gossip 'n' lies site run by disgraced, bubble-era Internet-stock analyst Henry Blodget, informed us that a "source close to Facebook employees" said in an e-mail to the site that the company would go public within weeks. The article's author, N ... More >>

Facebook Fumbles Its Way Toward a Phone

​Facebook is building a phone, the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital is reporting this week in a series of posts. Facebook basically has to do it if it wants to stay in competition with Apple and Google as the go-to online destination -- or platform, or "ecosystem." Lots of people make Fa ... More >>

The Perils of Policing Facebook Pages

​First it was the Islamic extremists. Now it's Mark Zuckerberg who is repressing Salman Rushdie. On Monday, Rushdie took to Twitter to complain that not only had Facebook shut down his page, apparently thinking it wasn't really his, but that the company then told him he couldn't use the name und ... More >>

Barnes & Noble Takes on Amazon in Tablet Wars

​A quick scan of this New York Times blog post is all one needs to conclude that Barnes & Noble faces a major challenge against Amazon in the tablet wars. Start with the picture, depicting B&N CEO William Lynch standing in front of a giant graphic showing that the Kindle Fire looks bet ... More >>

Copyright Fight the Subject of Juvenile Flamewars

​To the uninitiated, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce might sound like a larger version of local chambers of commerce: something like the Elks or the Rotary Club, where dull businesspeople get together for dull meetings to eat rubber chicken and to "network." But the U.S. Chamber is the largest lobb ... More >>

What Exactly Is a Tech Company?

​Fast Company has published what might be the best, clearest look at the how the contours of the tech landscape are shaping themselves, and how that landscape has come to be dominated by four companies. I was alerted to the article via a tweet by Chronicle tech reporter Casey Newton who characte ... More >>

R.I.P. Steve Jobs, an Insanely Great Capitalist

​As I write this, many of my Facebook friends are expressing their profound sadness, and actually issuing "thanks" to Steve Jobs, who died on Wednesday. I'm feeling the same way. It is astonishing that such sentiments can be felt, at this moment in history, about the CEO of any American corporat ... More >>

TechCrunch: Rewriting Press Releases, Gonzo-Style

​A lot of people love (or until recently, loved) TechCrunch. These seem to be people who want to know every last bit of news about the technology business, no matter how trivial, as soon as it breaks; entrepreneurs looking for financing; or venture capitalists looking for startups to invest in. A ... More >>

Facebook's Newest Blight: The Ticker

​Recently, to check to see whether my keyboard was working, I randomly slapped some keys. I happened to have Facebook open at the time and I ended up entering what I typed -- "jmjyttyj"-- into its people search. I got three hits. There is no member named jmjyttyj, but Facebook helpfully pointed me ... More >>

Netflix Saga: Fight for Your Right to Cheap Video Rentals

​Americans have collectively developed a keen sense of entitlement. That's why so many of us think we have a "right" to undeserved pay raises, undeserved good grades in school, free software, free music, low-priced gasoline; that we have a "right" to act like jackasses in traffic or in Internet co ... More >>

Why Are Tech Journos Suddenly Interested in News Corp. Scandal?

​When I was a staff editor at the tech-news site CNET News.com in the late '90s, one of the top editors there used to insist that we "localize" big news events by writing about how they were being covered and discussed on the Internet. So, for example, the death of Princess Di and the impeachment ... More >>

"Page One": Producer Kate Novak on Getting Inside the New York Times

Lindsay Lohan Shills for Pump-and-Dump Stocks on Twitter

​To get an idea of just how classy those "sponsored" celebrity tweets can be, take a look at what Lindsay Lohan tweeted last night. "Have you guys seen food and gas prices lately?" she asked. Yes, we have, Lindsay. Have you? Then her tweet took a weird turn, into economic analysis: "U.S. $ will so ... More >>

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong: Please Let Me in the Bubble

Yaniv Golan/Flickr​AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is jealous of the new Internet bubble, and he wants in. Last week during a meeting with investors, Armstrong noted the high valuations of companies like LinkedIn and Pandora and concluded that AOL is "severely undervalued." The Wall Street Journal quoted ... More >>

Apples Are Dirty, But Cabbage and Corn Are Clean

​Sunday, the Environmental Working Group released its annual Shoppers Guide to Pesticides in Produce, with the headline-grabbing "Dirty Dozen," or list of 12 fruits and vegetables most likely to be contaminated with pesticide residue. Newly crowned the dirtiest fruit in America: apples. Pesticides ... More >>

Unpacking Pandora's 'Risk Factors'

​Every time a company offers stock to the public, it must submit a form called an S-1 to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The form must provide a prospectus, which includes financial information as well as the risks potential investors would face in buying shares. Because lawyers and accoun ... More >>

No, Twitter Hasn't Replaced CNN

​It's become perfectly predictable: Every time there's a major news event, people spend several days talking about how Twitter and Facebook are replacing traditional news organizations -- the (sigh) "MSM." Even if the word "replacing" isn't used, that's often the implicationIn the present case -- ... More >>

What To Do? Thursday's Pick: Wafaa Bilal

​Wafaa Bilal @ City Lights Books On March 8, Wafaa Bilal, a professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, turned his back into a canvas for our collective conscience. During a 24-hour tattoo session, a borderless map of Iraq was drilled full of dots representing every casualty of the war -- 105,000 ... More >>

Firepower

Actress Best Known For Role as False Accuser Gets False Photo In Obit

That's not Mayella Ewell, Your Honor. ​If asked to choose a picture of actress Collin Wilcox-Paxton out of a lineup, most of you could not. But you wouldn't mistake her for Gregory Peck. Or would you? The actress, best known for her role as Mayella Ewell, the horrid, white trash fabulist whose bog ... More >>

A Duck’s Life

Why Outside Lands Looks Juicy to Big Promoters

By Peter Jamison We reported this week on the ungainly turf war that has erupted among bureaucrats and entrepreneurs over the future of Outside Lands, the popular three-day music festival whose inaugural run was overseen in August by Berkeley-based Another Planet Entertainment. Despite the event' ... More >>

Boots Riley's CoupTV Makes Revolution Come Quicker

Billy and His Rotting Fruit

The Smashing Pumpkins (Reprise)

Letters to the Editor

Week of Wednesday, December 7, 2005

Letters to the Editor

Week of March 20, 2002

KRONic Complaints

A media chain buys a local television station. Employees worry. Oh, the horror.

Dog Bites

Dog Bites

Night+Day

Unspun

New Editor at SF Weekly