by Brian Solis
I watched a clip of Valleywag’s Owen Thomas on CNBC discussing the impending Facebook IPO, when Randi Jayne, the sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and her six month old video became the focus of the conversation.
Randi is the head of online comic troop, The Dot Comix, and she shot a witty, funny, and potentially damaging video a while back that playfully skewers the valley mindset and culture, and equally blasts Facebook’s competition. The video, which was released back in January, has since been pulled from the Dot Comix site and Randi and Jen’s personal video blog.
Randi is both intelligent and creative, and I think the video is brilliant. So, a little fun shouldn’t hurt anyone right? Well, not unless your brother is maneuvering his company for a potentially economy changing public offering. And, as we all know, Wall Street has no sense of humor.
Are we in a quiet period? Who knows. But it sure is more fun when you get to speculate all you want without a formal response.
What we do know however, is that the company is hiring a Stock Administration Manager and industry insiders say that the countdown has begun.
The video, entitled, “Valleyfreude, Failure is Fun” captures through song, dance, and puppetry, the culture and practice of people taking pleasure in the pain of others. In the case, we’re mocking the failure of valley startups and the entrepreneurs and bloggers who thrive from it.
The video opens with Randi (wearing a Valleywag shirt) and her partner in crime, Jenny Lee (wearing a TechCrunch shirt) approaching a hopeless man on the street who happens to be wearing a shirt with the Friendster logo .
Randi sings,”Right now you have no users and you’re feeling really crappy. And when I see how sad you are, it sort of makes me happy! Sorry Friendster, it’s human nature. Nothing I can stop. It’s Valleyfreude. Our blogs do well when companies screw up.”
It’s patterned after popular Broadway musical, Avenue Q, with dancers wearing shirts representative of other companies who suffered online casualties including, boo.com, Excite, @home, and a few others that I can’t quite make out. Basically you can use your imagination.
It’s all fun and games until the Starbucks puppet sings, “Fuck you Yahoo, they’re going IPO.” Ah yes. A reminder of the failed acquisition attempt of Facebook by Yahoo.
That one line will echo for quite some time.
Enjoy the video here while it is still online.
Either way, Randi Jayne is going to be a lot richer than most of the Valleyfreude’s in Silicon Valley, so she (and her Dot Comix) can laugh all the way to the bank.
V-A-L-L-E-Y-F-R-E-U-D-EEEEEEEEEEEEE
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