Is Tesla Motors mad that Digg founder Kevin Rose spoiled the launch of its Model S sedan by leaking photos on Flickr? Yes and no, depending on who you ask at the ailing electric-car startup.
When Tesla Motors launched its all-electric Roadster sports car, celebrities lined up to order one — including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now we hear he's been trying to return it for months.
Those who can't do, teach. Second Life, the most overhyped virtual world, has been abandoned even by its most fervent journalistic promoters, like Reuters and Wired. It's now pitching itself as an online schoolhouse.
Tesla Motors, the best hope of Silicon Valley's nascent clean-transportation industry, is headed over a financial cliff. The only question is how many customers the electric sportscar maker will take for a ride.
Harvey Weinstein made his name trading the most emphemeral commodities of all — Oscar buzz — but it will be the harsh realities of cold, hard cash that threaten to bring him down.
Whenever he's had a glaring problem in his business, Harvey Weinstein — legendary manipulator of the press — has always been a master at deflecting attention away: No Oscars recently? Just look at how much money the lowbrow genre films his brother Bob have been raking in! No big genre successes? Well, look at our home…
It was a fantasy left over from the last boom: Hire a movie star to pitch your startup, and the dusting of tinsel will turbocharge sales. Those William Shatner ads sold plane tickets for Priceline, right? But the career of hard-partying entrepreneur Andrew Frame did not follow that script. We hear he was just fired as…
The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a five-year low today, closing down nearly 450 points. And the New York Times Co. had an even worse day. The company's stock dove almost 10%, lower than it's been in decades. And just after the close of the markets came the payoff: the company is cutting its dividend to six cents…
When will Samir Arora admit that Glam Media, his online ad network, is running out of money? Glam buys up ad space on websites and resells it to advertisers, as well as operating a few token websites itself. But it has overpaid for much of that space, and revenues are running dangerously short of projections. Now,…
Having laid off 75-some employees and run his electric carmaker's cash balance down to $9 million, what is Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk busying himself with? Conducting a witch hunt to find who leaked Tesla's financials to Valleywag. The Truth About Cars has published an email it claims is from Musk, which includes a…
The slow-motion crash of Tesla Motors continues. Last week, an insider revealed the electric-car maker, once the best hope of Silicon Valley's nascent clean-transportation industry, had only $9 million in the bank. Now, Elon Musk, the investor who recently deposed the company's CEO, claims the company has commitments…
The Valley's hottest electric-car maker is running on fumes. Tesla Motors, the brightest hope of Silicon Valley's nascent clean-automotive industry, has only $9 million in the bank, a longtime employee tells us. The company, which recently laid off dozens of employees and announced the closing of its Detroit office,…
We called it the Great Magazine Die-Off, but it is the work of an angry Media God. We should take this time to reflect what we have done to irritate him so, for He is smiting us, laying off people in great multitudes, and killing magazines. He's about to pair us up two-by-two and load us all onto a big boat (the seas…
It's only a matter of a few hundred dollars, but after high acquisitive LiveUniverse acquired affiliate movie marketer Peerflix, blogger Eric D. Snider stopped receiving the until-then-regular checks. Which happened around the exact same time that we got a tip — in late August — that LiveUniverse didn't have enough…
And so it begins — like a bad flashback to the year 2000, word comes from a tipster that while investors have pulled the plug on social networking startup Uber the site and service may stay online thanks to some free hosting help from ShareNow. But that doesn't mean there will be any employees around minding the…
With already pissed off VCs demanding their money back, Uber.com — a social network for hipsters — is doing anything but. Uber.com first called it quits last Friday but the LA-based website is now begging its users to spam its link on Facebook and MySpace in an effort to save it. A cunning strategy to let as many…
The online-ad network market is clogged with startups; most are bound to fail. But no death may be greeted with more joy than Jellycloud, the latest incarnation of Gator, a startup whose software was caught spying on users. A tipster tells us Jellycloud, with 36 employees, went under this weekend, with liquidators…
What was Harvey Weinstein thinking? The movie mogul is already being dissed by once-pliant reporters and magazines, and struggling to right his company and other investments. Now he's given more ammunition to the haters and socked his pocketbook, all in one fast miscalculation. The Weinstein Company chief reportedly…
Let us say it, since every other writer seems too kind: As CEO of AOL, Randy Falco is an utter embarrassment. Silicon Alley Insider recounts his perplexing performance in front of a crowd of media executives gathered for Advertising Week in New York. "Radio was supposed to die 50 years ago," Falco said. "The reason…
FiLife, a personal-finance site backed by IAC and the Wall Street Journal, is struggling, according to one ex-employee we eavesdropped on at the City Bakery, a coffeehouse in Manhattan's Flatiron neighborhood, as she interviewed for a new job. "The business model completely changed," she said. "It used to be…
