youngmanhattanite :
p. “I should disclose that The Gotham Gal and I are small investors in Curbed and The Gotham Gal is what I like to call a “hands on investor” in the company.” —
Fred Wilson ,
CEO of Union Square Ventures, financial backers of Zynga.
I wish Fred Wilson would stop calling me about his desire for Curbed to suppress this news. Dude gets bonkers when he’s pissed.
(Uh, guys? Prosecuting Fred for this is pretty completely off the wall, yes? Because obviously a random inane ad campaign requires board-level approval. Or, maybe, it’s the ad agency that overstepped? The ad agency that’s already admitted they fucked up? I think the idea of building users by papering car windshields is so misguided on its face that I’d expect Zynga to hang them out to dry for it because, well, they’re not idiots. As for Fred, perhaps maybe possibly he’s earned the trust that he’ll do the right thing?)
(Joey Arak: back from vacation as of three days ago! Takeaway: he’s part of the cover-up.)
(Hi Krucoff.)
Just a note that I am a big fan of Curbed.com LLC INC and Lockart Steele’s efforts online. Joey Arak included.
My post regarding lack of coverage Zynga at Curbed was done to poke fun at myself and the issue du jour . That said, prosecuting Fred for this, while obnoxious maybe, is not off the wall. It might be unpleasant to point out a local source of funding, but it’s very relevant, particularly for such a local issue.
Seems like the Fred Wilson/Curbed connection was made mostly in jest and I think NYCTHE’s main point was Curbed’s complete absence on the issue, for whatever reason, especially since it’s “the most-trafficked neighborhood weblog on the web” and Lockhart Steele, Curbed’s proprietor, presumably still lives in the downtown uberhood even if life on the UWS takes precedent sometimes.
I only
brought up Fred Wilson initially , who I have much respect and admiration for, since East Village Feed (
and later the Observer ) was having a hard time tracking down someone at Zynga, a SF-based company, and I thought Fred, an investor and concerned member of the
NYC community, might be sympathetic to the cause and possibly help.
But let’s go beyond these petty issues of “littering” and “vandalism” to look at what Peter Feld pointed out as
Zynga’s much larger and serious transgressions . It seems they have a reputation problem, not a one-off instance, which I would think an investor, especially one with enormous influence in the tech scene, would be concerned about and want to take steps to address management. Of course, I have no idea how these particular VC/portfolio company arrangements work but I think we all expect a certain amount of responsible stewardship in our online and offline environments.
Don’t blame the watchdogs , Lock.
(Hi 2004.)
Wow. This whole thing makes me wish I hadn’t bothered looking at Tumblr today. Or, almost ever. What’s the situation here? Someone made a boring sorta bad ad campaign? For an internet company? That someone owns some of? And that person owns something else? And someone reported on it?
God, I own things, make ads, own an internet company and write, and I still can’t work up an ounce of outrage or even interest in this “affair.”
Also there are like ninety million things painted on the streets of New York. So what.
For once I'm agreeing with Micheal Arrington.
