Shawn Fanning's Snocap purchased by music startup Imeem
Snocap, the company started by Napster creator Shawn Fanning, has been acquired by social network Imeem. What the fate of Fanning's sophomore effort proves: There may be second acts in the Valley, but they're usually not any good. Imeem had been using Snocap's digital registry to identify uploaded music for over a…
Party correspondent confronts ghosts of Yelp parties past
Yelp, the local-reviews site, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. Its parties, always hedonistic rampages of drunken conversations, burlesque troops, and makeout sessions in the photobooth, helped establish its local reputation and cement the loyalty of hardcore users. (…
Shawn Fanning's company deals itself losing hand with new music play
Snocap, the peer-to-peer music store started by Napster creator Shawn Fanning, is losing money, staff, founders, and partners. Not to mention money. So what's its new gambit, after licensing peer-to-peer technology and building MySpace stores both flopped? Enter BoomShuffle, a Web widget for creating music mixes…
Zazzle to follow Snocap to MySpace glory
Selling music on MySpace worked out so well for the now-downsized Snocap. Now, Zazzle.com is giving it a go, helping sell music merchandise through MySpace. It's the kind of original business plan you have to expect from a company's whose slogan is "infinite one-of-a-kindness."
New details on Snocap's CD Baby breakup
When Snocap and music retailer CD Baby ended their partnership earlier this month, Snocap made like it pulled the plug. But today CD Baby president Derek Sivers put out numbers that show why it's no surprise Snocap had to lay off 31 of its 57 employees. Its partnership with CD Baby only generated $12,000 in revenues.
Shawn Fanning leaves his Snocap baby an orphan
Snocap may have started as Napster creator Shawn Fanning and bad boy Jordan Mendelson's baby, but we've heard both Valley hipsters have washed their hands of their failing creation. A tipster reports that Fanning is long gone and focused on his latest startup, Rupture, a social network for videogamers. Mendelson,…
Shawn Fanning's baby killed by CD Baby
What led to yesterday's layoffs at Snocap, the digital-music startup founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning? The breakdown of a deal last week with online retailer CD Baby, if not the proximate cause, was surely a signal of the startup's incipient meltdown. CD Baby is a music store that allows independent artists…
Snocap lays off 60 percent of its employees?
A tipster reports that Snocap, the once-hot digital music startup from Napster founder Shawn Fanning and Silicon Valley bad boy Jordan Mendelson, has laid off 60 percent of its staff, and the company is up for sale. If true, it's not surprising, giving industry trends. Snocap was something of a second coming for…
5 lessons on how to triumph in the face of adversity
Dalton Caldwell, founder of the little-known social network and media sharing site iMeem, is in the news because Warner Music has dropped a copyright suit against his company Instead, Warner has granted Caldwell's users free access to the label's entire music catalog in exchange for a portion of iMeem's advertising…
Silicon Valley's golden men
This weekend's must-see movie isn't anything out of Hollywood — it's "Living Pictures/Men in Gold" at SFMOMA, a 40-minute video homage to seven Silicon Valley rich dudes. Created by French artist Sylvie Blocher, the video includes interview-montages with Snocap's Rusty Rueff, former Apple exec and "recovering…
Jordan Mendelson parties down, hires publicist?
Snocap's Jordan Mendelson is quite serious regarding his duties as the Valley's new symbol of personal bacchanalia. Witness these pics of a private cocktail party held this past weekend, sent along by a Mendelson fan who claims not to be his publicist. Large, lurid editions of the photos after the jump. And because…
