New York Times
2012
For the first time, the giants of the tech industry are spending more on creating, buying, and fighting patents than they are on R&D.
Part of New York Times' ongoing iEconomy series.
Dot Coms
42 articles
New York Times
Aug 2012
How the self-proclaimed “inventor of all things streaming” went from dot-com millionaire to crime ring accomplice.
Inc.
Feb 2012
He was fired from the company he helped create, YouSendIt. Then the cyberattacks started.
Businessweek
Feb 2012
Dotcom didn’t look like a criminal genius. With his ginger hair, chubby cheeks, and odd fashion sense—he often wore black suits and white-on-black wingtip shoes—he looked like he should be setting up a magic table.
How Kim Schmitz, the proprietor of Megaupload, made his fortune and landed in a New Zealand prison.
The Wall Street Journal
Jan 2012
How the U.S. government used a serial con who was caught running a mail-order steroid pharmacy in Mexico to prove that Google was knowingly placing ads for illegal drugs.
Businessweek
Nov 2011
On the TechCrunch founder’s venture capital fund, and a new breed of startup investor.
As Twitter-loving VC investors have become brand names themselves (Fred Wilson, Marc Andreessen, Chris Sacca), what one might call the auteur theory of venture capitalism has emerged—the idea that startup companies bear the unique creative signature of those who invested in them. To study a venture capitalist’s portfolio is to study his oeuvre.
New York
Sep 2011
In Silicon Valley, up all night coding in the dorms with the aspiring Mark Zuckerbergs of tomorrow.
New York Review of Books
Aug 2011
On how search and advertising became indistinguishable, the finer points of not being evil, and why privacy is by nature immeasurable. How Google made us the product:
“Google conquered the advertising world with nothing more than applied mathematics,” wrote Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired. “It didn’t pretend to know anything about the culture and conventions of advertising—it just assumed that better data, with better analytical tools, would win the day. And Google was right.”
The Financial Times
Jul 2011
A look at the dating site's new algorithm.
Codenamed “Synapse”, the Match algorithm uses a variety of factors to suggest possible mates. While taking into account a user’s stated preferences, such as desired age range, hair colour and body type, it also learns from their actions on the site. So, if a woman says she doesn’t want to date anyone older than 26, but often looks at profiles of thirty-somethings, Match will know she is in fact open to meeting older men. Synapse also uses “triangulation”. That is, the algorithm looks at the behaviour of similar users and factors in that information, too.
New Yorker
Jul 2011
Inside the world of online dating:
If the dating sites had a mixer, you might find OK Cupid by the bar, muttering factoids and jokes, and Match.com in the middle of the room, conspicuously dropping everyone’s first names into his sentences. The clean-shaven gentleman on the couch, with the excellent posture, the pastel golf shirt, and that strangely chaste yet fiery look in his eye? That would be eHarmony.
Fast Company
Jul 2011
A profile of new Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard, who in another life was a touring musician and hated Ticketmaster just like everyone else.
Wired (UK)
Apr 2011
On the “world’s largest social network that you probably haven’t yet heard of” and its enigmatic founder.
Businessweek
Apr 2011
“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.”
New York Times
Apr 2011
At times, Mr. Hsieh comes across as an alien who has studied human beings in order to live among them.
A profile of the Zappos CEO.
Reuters
Apr 2011
An insider history of the fall of Myspace; from Rupert Murdoch calling Facebook a mere “communications utility” to the disastrous 2006 deal with Google that demanded huge pageviews and ads everywhere, and finally the present day ruins of a titan.
Xconomy
Jan 2011
The next frontier of search is… everything. Voice recognition, image recognition, and why Google’s data set is one of the most valuable scientific tools of our age.
Vanity Fair
Apr 2011
A profile of Jack Dorsey, co-founder (and displaced CEO) of Twitter. Dorsey’s latest venture, a mobile credit card system called Square that only officially launched in February 2011, already processes more than a million transactions per day.
New York
Jan 2011
On the group of friends who came to rule the bizarre, decreasingly lucrative world of Internet porn.
Fast Company
Feb 2011
How the social networks that popped up in Facebook’s absence—the site is not available behind the Great Firewall—are changing Chinese culture.
GQ
Dec 2010
A tech neophyte looks for answers in Silicon Valley, “the last place in America where people are this optimistic.”
New York Review of Books
Dec 2010
Where the actual online money is centralized, and where Google will have to go to continue chasing it.
The Awl
Nov 2010
The perpetually underpaid author takes a moonlighting job with Demand Media, publisher of search-engine optimized articles with titles like “Hair Styles for Women Over 50 With Glasses”, absurdity ensues.
Businessweek
Oct 2010
Diapers.com has a stripped-down business model, a massive warehouse staffed by robots, and a legitimate chance to outsell Amazon.
Wired (UK)
Jun 2010
Foursquare and Gowalla are in a VC-funded race to become the dominant location-based social network. But their founders say both companies have a larger purpose.
Wired
Jun 1995
Ted Nelson’s Xanadu project was supposed to be the universal, democratic hypertext library that would help human life evolve into an entirely new form. Didn’t turn out that way.
