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In Brief: News flash: Valleywag’s editor revealed as …August 3rd, 2007 at 1:50 pmSource:Valleywag
On Wednesday, Tim O’Shaughnessy, one of the leading product managers, left along with 3 key developers to do their own startup. This is in addition to the departure of key lead developers last week that were laid off. During an employee lunch meeting today, the morale is at an all-time low. Ah, but when other staffing plans fail, there’s always nepotism. Another tipster says that after the departure of most of Revolution Health’s lead developers, the remaining stalwart is Todd Fisher, son of Revolution CTO Marty Fisher. Ah, family. Revolution, conveniently, bought Todd Fisher’s company, Simo Software, in 2005. Simo was one of four acquisitions by Revolution that year — all of which Revolution has since shut down or left to languish. To make up for the traffic lost from its failed acquisitions, we hear the company is now pushing employees towards a goal of garnering 5 million Web visitors in five months. To meet that goal, Revolution is spending heavily on search-engine marketing — as much as $700,000 a month, a tipster says. Not that advertising on search engines is such a terrible idea, mind you, if done well and frugally. But at that spendthrift rate, will Revolution have much money left to enter the bidding for diet site SparkPeople, which it’s rumored to be interested in? (Photo of Tim O’Shaughnessy by Robert A. Reeder for The Washington Post)
Plaxo’s motivations, of course, are purely mercenary. Everyone wants a piece of Facebook’s magical billions. Where Facebook is weak, of course, are its not-so-private privacy settings. Your choice, when adding someone as a facebok “friend,” is to offer them either an insulting (and easy to spot) “limited profile,” or open the kimono, drunken party shots and all. Plaxo, by contrast, offers more fine-tuned controls in its new Pulse social network. And, most importantly, for self-important self-promoters like podcaster Robert Scoble, it offers total control over how to spam your fans. The premise: Plaxo users will be able to designate contacts as dysfunctional family members, insincere friends, smarmy coworkers, casual acquaintances, or desperate hangers-on, and treat them accordingly — never leaving them the wiser as to their classification. Your friends will never know how limited you think they are. If the goal is to boost its buzz, and with it the company’s valuation, Plaxo’s social networking bid certainly makes sense. The company’s software already actively updates address books, but that’s about as exciting a business as LinkedIn. The new Plaxo aims to be the Web’s social butterfly. But before it emerges from the chrysalis, let’s all stop and ask ourselves: Can we face the propspect of having another social network to update without going mad? At some point the old and familiar outdraws the shiny and new.
News flash: Valleywag’s editor revealed as “snarky,” party correspondent “leggy.” Who knew? We’re still hoping for a swanky receptionist, though. [The Inquirer]
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In the youth culture of 
