Are Coders Worth It?
On cushy jobs in web development, deeply un-cushy opportunities in writing, and our assumptions about the value of labor.
Dot Coms
Drugstore Cowboy
The con man who cost Google $500 million.
Greed Is Groupon
The daily deals company turned down a $6 billion offer from Google and went public. Now its stock is down 80% and its founder/CEO has been fired. On Groupon’s failed strategy and tenuous future.
How Much Tech Can One City Take?
How a burgeoning tech workforce swallowed San Francisco.
The Patent, Used as a Sword
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.
How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything
A look inside Google’s Ground Truth.
A Dot-Com Bust
How the self-proclaimed “inventor of all things streaming” went from dot-com millionaire to crime ring accomplice.
Winamp’s Woes: How the Greatest MP3 Player Undid Itself
The story of an opportunity missed.
How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet
The autopsy of a once-dominant site.
Scamworld
An exposé of Internet Marketers.
The Maturation of the Billionaire Boy-Man
A profile of Mark Zuckerberg, savvy CEO.
Get Rich U.
On the relationship between Stanford and Silicon Valley.
Austin, We Have a Problem
A report from Austin, Texas as it turns into a dot-com hotspot.
A Silicon Valley Tale of Humiliation and Revenge
He was fired from the company he helped create, YouSendIt. Then the cyberattacks started.
Kim Dotcom, Pirate King
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.
Con Artist Starred in Sting That Cost Google Millions
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.
Streaming Dreams
On YouTube’s shift towards professionally created content.
Michael Arrington's Revenge
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.
The Great Tech War Of 2012
Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook vs. Amazon.
Bubble Boys
In Silicon Valley, up all night coding in the dorms with the aspiring Mark Zuckerbergs of tomorrow.
How Google Dominates Us
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.”
Inside Match.com
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.
A Woman's Place
On Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and the gender dynamics of Silicon Valley.
Looking for Someone
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.
Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America
A profile of new Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard, who in another life was a touring musician and hated Ticketmaster just like everyone else.
