Category Archives: People

We all know that memes can be hilarious and can often involve pop culture icons and celebrities. Whether it’s about Leonardo DiCaprio, Keanu Reeves, Ryan Gosling, or other known individuals, people surely love their memes. One of the most recent ones to take the Internet world by storm doesn’t feature a movie celebrity or musician. Rather, it’s an innocent photo (don’t they always start out like that?) featuring US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton simply sitting in a military plane wearing her sunglasses and typing away on her mobile device.

With such an iconic photo of the Secretary of State being published, there’s going to be someone that will make it into a popular meme. And that’s exactly what Stacy Lambe and Adam Smith did when they created the pop culture hit Texts From Hillary. The premise? Simple…just take the famous photo of Mrs. Clinton looking at her phone, add in another fun photo of another individual doing something on their phone and then come up with a crazy and funny story. That’s it! So far, some of the submissions have been memes featuring the Secretary with known individuals like disgraced politician Anthony Weiner, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, Vice-President Joe Biden, Jon Stewart, Meryl Streep, Rachel Maddow, Mitt Romney, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Ryan Gosling, and many others. 

One of the hottest startups to hit the tech scene has got to be Path. This private social network was the center of attention at tonight’s edition of PandoMonthly, a monthly event hosted by PandoDaily, the tech publication started by journalist Sarah Lacy just a few months ago. If you’ve never been to one of these events, you should definitely try to go because for entrepreneurs and those eager to break into the scene, this is one of those events that will shed some light and help answer questions you might have about starting your own business and understanding life lessons that famed technologists have gone through. And as tonight’s subject centered around Path, logically the one being interviewed by Mrs. Lacy would have to be none other than Path’s founder, Dave Morin.

Held in the Mission district of San Francisco at Madone Studios, this was PandoDaily’s second monthly event and I must say that tonight’s talk with Mr. Morin was perhaps the best one yet. Entrepreneurs, journalists, tech enthusiasts, and those who work in Silicon Valley all attended to better understand what makes Mr. Morin tick and what he did to overcome all the obstacles to create the antithesis of Facebook. Ms. Lacy wasted no time getting down to the nitty gritty–but instead of talking about anything truly scandalous or outrageous, Mr. Morin was peppered with questions about his humble beginnings at Apple to what he created at Facebook and then ultimately to his failures and successes with his very own startup, Path.

In what was widely reported yesterday, Digg and Milk founder, and creator of the famed web-series Diggnation, Kevin Rose, has joined the Google. Today, in an aptly-placed post on Google+, Mr. Rose officially confirmed it, along with Bradley Horowitz. Although his post on Google+ may be a clear sign or indication that he’s gone 100% over with Google, it should be nothing more than a coincidence. Many months ago, Mr. Rose was one of probably a few people who shed services like Tumblr, Posterous, and WordPress in place of having Google+ be their official blog where people could respond and interact with him.

Nevertheless, it’s the place where Mr. Rose chose to make this announcement, but yet still hasn’t quite divulged what he’ll be doing with the search engine giant. But what he does share is that several of the Milk team will be going over to help build something in Mountain View. Along with himself, Google is acquiring Milk’s other co-founder, Daniel Burka, and their business development guy Chris Hutchins, who might also be known as the founder of LaidOffCamp.

Amid some speculation about what Mr. Rose and the Milk team will be doing, one thing that seems to be clear is that Google intends to put them to work to help build out their social efforts. Right now, there is YouTube and Google+ as probably the search engine’s only social components. YouTube is pretty self-sustaining and doesn’t really need any help, but Google+ on the other hand, needs a big boost. ComScore is reporting that while the social network had a decent boost in its hey day, the recent stats show that visitors only spend an average of 3 minutes within the month of January. Google needs to find a way to get people to stay longer on the site and hopefully Mr. Rose and the team will find a way to make that happen. His extensive experience in creating a service like Oink, Digg, and even Diggnation, should come in handy to help build a more thorough and scalable product line that people will clamor over each other to use, but that depends on how much leverage and freedom he’ll have.

Still no word yet on what will happen to Milk and the rest of the team.

Photo Credit: Kevin Rose at Diggnation during SXSW with Leo Laporte on stage, right before he crowdsurfed via Paul Stamatiou

Update: TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis is reporting that Google’s hiring of Kevin Rose is indeed an acqui-hire role where the entire Milk team will be joining the search giant. The entire deal is reported to be between $15-30 million with all the investors very happy with the situation. Turns out that Google beat Facebook for the team since the now-former Milk team will be spearheading Google’s continued social efforts (and boy do they need them).

Original story: Seems like we now know what Kevin Rose is up to next. Since leaving his company, Digg, he’s gone and created a new startup called Milk, which introduced the world to “rate everything” app Oink, which was recently shuttered. Many people thought that Mr. Rose would go back to his entrepreneurial roots, but now, according to All Things D, his next plans are now becoming clearer…he’s joining Google.

Sources tell All Things D that the news isn’t an acquisition of Milk or an “acqui-hire” role…but it seems that Mr. Rose will be going to work for the search engine giant along with several of his startup colleagues. No idea on what he’s going to be doing at Google, but it doesn’t seem far-fetched for him to work with their investment arm, Google Ventures, or perhaps even helping the service to grow their social offerings. Maybe he could revive Diggnation on Google+ and rebrand it to something like Plusnation where he would be able to leverage his strong and loyal following.

This isn’t the first time that Mr. Rose hasn’t been pursued by Google. It’s important to note that in 2008, Digg was approached for a potential deal with Google for $200 million, but eventually hit a snag and the search engine walked away. Now, it seems that they’ll settle for the brains behind the operation and take Mr. Rose to help them out. Since starting Milk, Mr. Rose emphasized that it was all about quickly and efficiently launching startups and products. In 2011, he started Milk and soon he quickly debuted his first product Oink. Five months later, he shutters the service, and one day afterwards, pivots and joins Google.

VentureBeat and All Things D reports that Mr. Rose has always had a friendly relationship with the search giant…in fact, Google Ventures invested $1.5 million in a vote of confidence in Milk. Perhaps they saw something else in him that led them to talk about a potential full-time role.

No word yet on whether Mr. Rose will be shuttering Milk as well or if he’ll continue to run the company while also pursuing interests with Google.

Photo Credit: Kevin Rose via First Round

This April, join some of today’s leading PR professionals at the PR Disrupted Conference. Focusing on Food, Wine and Travel!

PR Disrupted is a conference that explores new ideas and disruptive and engaging trends in travel, food and wine. Yet with a compass focused on how content, public relations, marketing and social media are shaping the landscape.

The conference will help you anticipate the shifts and changes in the market place, consumer attitudes and how social media continues to play a broader role in transforming the way we engage and interact.

Date: Monday, April 9, 2012
Times: 8 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Where: J.W. Marriot Hotel – 500 Post Street, SF.
Registration: www.prsummit.org