HBO poisoning BitTorrent downloads with bad seeds
— their time would be better spent working on a distribution model instead of fighting it via Digg #AOL buys Weblogs Inc., including Engadget
— I heard $40 million, but take it with salt; seems like an unusually expensive content play #Synchroedit, open-source real-time multiuser web editor
— whew, that’s a mouthful; sounds like the open-source version of Jot Live #Yahoo and Upcoming, Sitting In A Tree
Two years ago, I launched Upcoming.org and announced it to the world. Today, along with my partners Gordon Luk and Leonard Lin, I’m unbelievably proud to announce that Upcoming.org is now a member of the Yahoo! family.
I’ve always had a warm and fuzzy feeling about Yahoo. It’s been my browser homepage since forever, and I still have akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo/ stuck in muscle memory. Recently, the nostalgia has been replaced by admiration as I’ve watched them making smart decisions, acquiring great companies (Flickr, anyone?), and hiring all of my friends. The end result is that they’re doing some of the most interesting work online, and I found myself linking to them more and more over the last year.
So when Stewart asked if we’d be interested in coming to Yahoo, we were surprised and flattered. It’s immensely satisfying for a company as interesting and high-profile as Yahoo to validate the hard work we’ve done, and to see the future potential for growth.
After all, Upcoming was always a side project, fueled by passion and caffeine in the spare hours when we weren’t at our respective day jobs. When I think about how much we were able to pull off with so little, and what we’ll now be able to do with the staggering resources Yahoo has to offer… Well, it blows my mind a little. Sunnyvale, here we come!
I’ve posted more details on Upcoming.org, and both Gordon and Leonard have written about it on their own sites. For Yahoo’s take on it, Paul Levine from the Yahoo! Local team wrote about the news on the company blog.
Oh, and a profound thanks to everyone who’s supported the site since the beginning. I kiss you!
October 10, 2005: Thanks so much to Leonard for answering questions and covering e-mails while I was at Web 2.0 last week. We’re all getting ready for the big move later this month, but I’ll be around by e-mail and IM if you want to say hi.