nonsociety

Julia Allison thinks she's the future of online advertising

Nicholas Carlson · 08/07/08 04:20PM

One of Julia Allison's posts to NonSociety yesterday began: "Today Meghan and I met with the most amazing real estate broker in Manhattan (and I’ve met a few) — Dain Lee from Corcoran." Allison's cofounder and fellow NonSociety blogger, Meghan Asha quoted the post on her blog and added, "Dain knows REAL ESTATE the way he knows fashion, have you ever seen a more pimp Broker? He SAVED us today, by showing us spaces that literally made me drool. NICE JOB DAIN!" Believe it or not — I didn't, at first — Allison and Asha tell us the dreadfully buoyant copy wasn't paid for by Lee, or Corcoran. But when NonSociety does start selling ads, they won't look much different.Before Allison started NonSociety, she actually sold product placements on her personal blog to Dunkin Donuts. She told us plans to bring a similar model to her new venture. "In the future, we absolutely intend to have authentic product placements," Allison said, mentioning Canon, Victoria's Secret, Sephora, American Express, and Cisco as brands she hopes will buy in. "We only want to plug products we genuinely believe in," Allison said. "We think that is the future of marketing — genuine product recommendations, no bullshit." Uncomfortably, we're on the same page as Allison when it comes to the market potential of product placements in online media. One of the more successful publishing startups over that past few years has been EQAL, the team behind Lonelygirl15 and KateModern, which actually earned solid revenues stuffing shows with as many Neutrogena and Hershey products as any episode of America's Next Top Model. That company's cofounders, Greg Goodfried and Miles Beckett, just landed $5 million in funding. Allison has higher goals. "12 months from now," she tells us, "you will no longer refer to me as a nontrepreneur." True. Product placement requires some level of trust from the audience. If even Allison's non-product-placement endorsements continue to be so gushily nongenuine, we likely won't have to refer to her at all.

Be An Extra On Julia Allison's Show!

Hamilton Nolan · 08/07/08 08:46AM

NonSociety, Julia Allison's new media project of indeterminate meaning, needs your help! The protocelebrity and Wired cover girl is filming a TV pilot show for Bravo with her friends, and she's sent out an invitation seeking "35 fashionable, vivacious people who will agree to go on camera." It's interesting that while Julia's show has been heavily hyped for some time, she's rather self-deprecating about its prospects. The exclusive affair happens tonight, so the invite is last-minute. While you might expect, say, half of your friends to come to a party you throw, we're conservatively estimating that Julia is counting on around a 5% response rate, meaning she sent this email out to 700 people in search of 35 takers. We could be wrong! After the jump, read the entire invite-then RSVP and help her out. It's the least you can do. Spies, please send us some details.

Julia Allison underling calls ConnectU founders "spoiled bitches," then tries to recruit them

Jackson West · 08/06/08 08:00PM

ConnectU cofounders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, even as they're trying to wrestle a chunk of Facebook from former Harvard school chum Mark Zuckerberg, are training for the double-shell rowing event at the Olympics. Maureen O'Connor, an editor at Julia Allison's entertainment startup, NonSociety, hoped the privileged pair would send the site updates from Beijing. So O'Connor emailed Guest of a Guest editor Rachelle Hruska — who apparently knows the fair-haired Harvard-grad twins — to ask for an introduction. One small problem.Hruska noted that O'Connor's other blog, Ivygate, had called the twins "spoiled bitches that tried to lay one on the invincible Mark Zuckerberg and failed." We don't see the problem with hiring "spoiled bitches" to work at NonSociety — they'll fit right in with Allison! Had Hruska really been cutting, she'd have asked how Julia Allison's latest BFF, Randi Zuckerberg — older sister of the man the Winklevosses accused of stealing ConnectU's code for Facebook — would feel about the hire.

Julia Allison parody funnier than anything she's ever produced

Nicholas Carlson · 08/04/08 02:20PM

Richard Blakeley, the Gawker videologist who turned this year's CES into a TV-free zone, has turned his clicker on Wired covergirl Julia Allison. She is a rich target for parody: the lip dubs, the outfits, the new friends she charms into acting like old friends. The only problem with Blakeley's "NomSociety," a spoof of Allison's startup NonSociety? It assumes that anyone was ever paying attention to Allison's "startup." The original work, which you probably haven't seen, below:

Julia Allison just won't leave

Owen Thomas · 07/25/08 11:55PM

"Good news! Julia is moving to Silicon Valley for the winter!" — Valleywag intern Alaska Miller, reporting live from the TechCrunch party on notorious nontrepreneur Julia Allison's plans to move to the Bay Area from New York later this year. By "good news," I assume he means the fact that we have all fall to prepare.

Julia Allison: HTML tutor to the nonstars

Melissa Gira Grant · 07/14/08 12:20PM

It's been just a little over a year since Julia Allison touched down in Silicon Valley, strutting past the hand-stampers at an arts fundraiser and informing anyone who would listen that she was looking for a boyfriend to help her with her website. It hasn't exactly paid off. The so-soft-it-hurts launch of her new startup, Nonsociety.com, is a technical tour de farce. The rumored-to-death project wraps glamour shots of Allison and friends like comrade Meghan Asha Parikh, TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington's ex-girlfriend, around sideways-scrolling feeds ("lifestreams"!) of their Tumblr blogs. Meghan, a former hedge-fund analyst, shows off her tech creds here. She's the only one who seems to have a functioning "lifestream," even on launch day. Allison's and a handbag-designing ladyfriend's came up 404. We salvaged the launch video, in case the whole thing collapses:

Nonsociety's Video Remix: Valtrex Edition

Sheila · 07/14/08 11:15AM

Gawker videographer Richard Blakeley noticed that if you re-mix the embarassingly bad Nonsociety video (dating columnist/publicity whore Julia Allison & Friends' new "online business" with actual investors) it syncs up perfectly with... a Valtrex commercial. Watch it! In related "defending your online reputation" news...