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Barry Diller likes to play dress-up, too
Melissa Gira Grant · 05/20/08 01:20PMHaving reached 13 million girls with the chance to design glittery jpegs for each other, social site Girlsense has a new parent: InterActiveCorp. IAC already has teen virtual world Zwinky and its 6 million users, part of their aim to take on a "broader teen mindshare." Girlsense brings a different slice of the demo — the girls who go for Glam Ads and butterflies, and maybe a few of their doting rainbow-loving boys-who-are-friends, too.
Ask.com buys reference site Lexico
Jackson West · 05/15/08 12:00PMLexico, the company behind reference sites like Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, has been acquired by also-ran search engine Ask.com, a unit of Barry Diller's IAC, for an undisclosed sum. It will mean an 11 percent boost in traffic for Ask and more revenue for Lexico's sites, as Google had cut a special deal with IAC for a higher revenue share than it would give to the likes of Dictionary.com. Possibly tipping their hand about future moves, Ask CEO Jim Safka told the AP the site was also looking to improve results related to health and entertainment, presumably through more acquisitions. The move comes after IAC's Barry Diller settled a fight with Liberty's John Malone, a major IAC shareholder, over plans to split the company into five different parts.
CollegeHumor smack talk hits Facebook where it hurts — the click-through rates
Nicholas Carlson · 05/13/08 11:40AMWhen Google took on Facebook in ultimate frisbee, Facebook took the series 2-0. Now we hear a contest of beer pong — the drinking game involving ping pong balls, Solo cups and Milwaukee's Best — has been scheduled between Mark Zuckerberg's finest and the New York-based, IAC-backed CollegeHumor. CollegeHumor cofounder Ricky Van Veen began the smack talk early posting the above image to his blog. It reads:
Rank tech's 10 best workspaces
Nicholas Carlson · 05/13/08 09:00AMHumble Diller Not That Humble
Nick Denton · 05/12/08 04:30PMHaving escaped John Malone's hook, former studio boss and internet tycoon Barry Diller is attempting to reinvent himself, says Portfolio's Duff McDonald. The new Diller trademark? Humility. "We were kidding ourselves if we thought we could pull off an integrated conglomerate that acts like G.E. or P&G in anything less than 10, 20, or 30 years." Diller is indeed cutting internet conglomerate IAC down to a more manageable rump of web sites such as Ask, Citysearch and Evite. But the 65-year-old tycoon hasn't entirely lost his trademark vindictiveness. Doug Lebda-who sold Diller online mortgage search engine Lending Tree for $726m before the real-estate bubble burst-was prepared to buy the business back at a discount. Why hasn't that happened? "No one is allowed to school Diller twice," says a mogul watcher.
Tech's top 10 workspaces
Nicholas Carlson · 05/06/08 08:00PMWhat makes for an appealing workspace? The envelopes they leave in your mailbox every two weeks. But after that, it comes down to design and amenities. Also, we like windows and brick. Lots and lots of brick. After spending some time on Office Snapshots, we present the ten best-looking offices in tech, below.
IAC
Nicholas Carlson · 05/06/08 07:55PMIAC's Summer Explosion
Ryan Tate · 05/01/08 04:09AMBarry Diller, John Malone May Kiss And Make Up
Ryan Tate · 04/28/08 05:47AM"Fresh off his legal victory over Liberty Media, IAC/InterActiveCorp boss Barry Diller is expected to meet with his board this week to restart the process of breaking up his company into five separate pieces, The Post has learned. At the same time, sources said Diller and Liberty Media Chairman John Malone are continuing to talk about a deal that would trade one or more of IAC's assets for Liberty's ownership stake in IAC." [Post]
Yes, that's Jay Adelson rapping and Kevin Rose not dancing
Nicholas Carlson · 04/23/08 05:40PM
IAC's Connected Ventures may have done it first, and AOLers in France may have done it better, but give Digg's companywide lip-synching video credit. Skip ahead to check out Jay Adelson at 2:02. Rewind from there to see Kevin Rose Digg underlings jumping up on a conference-room table. (Founder Kevin Rose doesn't actually appear until the very end, where he declares the group "crazy" and leaves. For his future dignity, a wise move. No one has, as yet, leaked footage of Barry Diller or Randy Falco wearing shades and rapping.) Full clip is below:
Barry Diller is paying Jakob Lodwick more than $100,000 a year to stay away from IAC employees
Nicholas Carlson · 04/14/08 06:40PMWe heard Jakob Lodwick may have broken his severance agreement with IAC's Connected Ventures when he poached Vimeo Web designer Justin Ouellette to help him start Muxtape, an online mix-tapes startup. How much could the gaffe cost the Connected Ventures cofounder? Reportedly, $100,000 a year through 2011. "What a mess," an IAC exec tells us. True, but mostly for Lodwick. IAC can hire more Web designers to replace the one Lodwick's entrepreneurial ventures have cost them so far. Diller's six-figure dole will be harder for Lodwick to replace.
"McCain Girls" A Prank, Mercifully
Ryan Tate · 04/13/08 10:21PMThe three women who dubbed themselves the "McCain Girls" and made a series of YouTube videos on behalf of the Republican presidential candidate were working for 23/6, the "humor" site from IAC/Huffington Post, and their entire campaign was a joke. To hear 23/6 President Sarah Bernard tell it, the first video was supposed to be an obvious parody of the Obama Girl videos, but no one understood that. Then 23/6 decided to keep the "prank" going as long as possible, which turned out to be one month. McCain watched the video repeatedly, he told Fox News in the clip after the jump, but his description of it as "very entertaining" hints that he knew something was fishy.
Barry Diller's video site cashing in on searches for "beastiality"
Jackson West · 04/09/08 06:20PMDoing some follow-up research on Vimeo's traffic after our post earlier today, a tipster made an intriguing discovery. Compete.com lists "beastiality" (sic) as the fourth-highest search term driving traffic to the IAC-owned video-sharing site. Which may have something to do with open-minded libertarian founder Jakob Lodwick's choice of "Obeastiality" as the name of his blog (it now redirects to jakoblodwick.com). Sadly, there's no hot monkey sex on the site, but I did find a clip of a woman making out with a cat, so that's something. Interspecies lovin' on Vimeo, after the jump.
IAC wants black people to love Rushmore Drive
Jackson West · 04/09/08 01:20PMBarry Diller's IAC is throwing a launch party in New York tonight for new portal Rushmore Drive, which includes an Ask-based search engine manicured to appeal to African-Americans. Fast Company senior editor and blogger Lynne D. Johnson managed to sneak an early screenshot and some marketing messaging online. The project, launched at IAC's typically glacial pace, has been in the works for a year, and IAC plans to target other niche demos in the future, Johnson reports. According to the latest data from Pew Internet, 56 percent of African-Americans use the Internet. Might be a good place for Google to post some job listings.
Lodwick's Muxtape mess
Nicholas Carlson · 04/08/08 03:00PMJakob Lodwick, the fired founder of Vimeo who's now dabbling in online music, rushed out an announcement of his involvement with Muxtape, an online mix-tapes startup — shortly after we started asking questions. But in his attempt to spoil our scoop, Lodwick may have put the payout he got from Vimeo's parent company, IAC, at risk. We're told that part of Lodwick's severance package included a fairly typical agreement to not poach any of his former Connected Venture colleagues for future projects. But with Muxtape, that's just what Lodwick's done.
Barry Diller Chooses Grandpa Font
Nick Denton · 03/31/08 08:48AMSo internet mogul Barry Diller won the struggle for control of IAC, the ungainly conglomerate which owns sites such as Ticketmaster and College Humor. Here's his celebratory announcement to employees. It's rather clunkier than one expects of the highly quotable IAC boss. Presumably Diller means, in the last line, that employees can have more confidence in the future; wishing IAC colleagues instead more surefootedness implies that IAC's missteps were somehow their fault. And some graphically-aware assistant really should help the 66-year-old former studio boss change his default email font.
Killer Diller the victor in IAC breakup case
Owen Thomas · 03/28/08 04:50PMScore one for the bitter old queen. Barry Diller, battling with major IAC shareholder John Malone in court, has won the right to break up IAC without interference from Malone's Liberty. This solves one problem for Diller, but creates another. Instead of running one hodgepodge of Internet businesses, he'll have five of them to worry about. Sparring with Malone, a business ally turned enemy, will look simple compared to regaining Wall Street's affections.
Did College Humor Just Shake Off Adult Supervision?
Nick Denton · 03/27/08 12:34PMSay farewell to Mo Koyfman, the IAC executive dropped in to monitor the crazy kids when Barry Diller's internet conglomerate acquired College Humor. He's resigned from his position as chief operating officer of the dorky web site. There's nothing particularly amusing about the news, except for the assumption that Koyfman represented adult supervision. Founders Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen were always substantially more straight-laced than their reputation for rampant loft parties would indicate; while 30-year-old wannabe modelizer Koyfman, however engaging, is as much a grown-up as Barry Diller is an internet guru.
Leaked Doc Shows How Barry Diller Protected Himself Against IAC's Tumble
Ryan Tate · 03/18/08 02:33AMWikileaks obtained a JP Morgan presentation put together for media mogul Barry Diller, showing Diller how to protect his personal wealth against any, erm, hypothetical future declines in the value of his internet conglomerate IAC. The techniques outlined in the 31-page document (PDF) neatly circumvent restrictions on insider trading but are really only useful for insiders who anticipate their company shares will decline, since stock price increases are limited along with declines. For example, here was the plan presented to Diller in February 2007: