An Open Letter to Washington
We’ve all had the good fortune to found Internet companies and nonprofits in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online.
However we’re worried that the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act–which started out as well-meaning efforts to control piracy online–will undermine that framework.
These two pieces of legislation threaten to:
* Require web services, like the ones we helped found, to monitor what users link to, or upload. This would have a chilling effect on innovation;
* Deny website owners the right to due process of law;
* Give the U.S. Government the power to censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran; and
* Undermine security online by changing the basic structure of the Internet.
We urge Congress to think hard before changing the regulation that underpins the Internet. Let’s not deny the next generation of entrepreneurs and founders the same opportunities that we all had.
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch
David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post
Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and co-founder of Alexa Internet
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal
Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist
Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay
Biz Stone, co-founder of Obvious and Twitter
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation
Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter
Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!

[NY Times]

Tap11 works with about 500 major companies, agencies, and brands. Tap11′s software allows brands to monitor their social media engagement using a dashboard. Tap11 CEO Adam Zbar and CTO Braxton Woodham will become head of engineering at AVOS.

YOUTUBE FOUNDERS ACQUIRE DELICIOUS FROM YAHOO!

Promise Users the Same Great Service And Even Easier & More Fun Ways To Save, Share, and Discover the Web’s “Tastiest” Content.

San Francisco, CA., – April 26, 2011 – Delicious.com, the leading social bookmarking service, has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. As creators of the largest online video platform, they have firsthand experience enabling millions of users to share their experiences with the world. Their vision for Delicious is to continue to provide the same great service users love and to make the site even easier and more fun to save, share, and discover the web’s “tastiest” content. Delicious will become part of AVOS, a new Internet company.

“We’re excited to work with this fantastic community and take Delicious to the next level,” said Chad Hurley, CEO of AVOS. “We see a tremendous opportunity to simplify the way users save and share content they discover anywhere on the web.”

“We spoke with numerous parties interested in acquiring the site, and chose Chad and Steve based on their passion and unique vision for Delicious,” said John Matheny, SVP of Communications and Communities at Yahoo!

The YouTube founders plan to work closely with the community over the next few months to develop innovative features to help solve the problem of information overload. “We see this problem not just in the world of video, but also cutting across every information-intensive media type,” said Chen.

Going back to their roots, Hurley and Chen located Delicious in downtown San Mateo, California, blocks away from where they started YouTube. They’re aggressively hiring to build a world-class team to take on the challenge of building the best information discovery service on the web.

About Delicious
Delicious is the leading social bookmarking service for saving, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. Started in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, Delicious has built a passionate, worldwide community of millions of users. In 2011, Delicious was acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Previously, they co-founded YouTube, the world’s largest video site in 2005, which was acquired by Google 18 months later for $1.76B. Delicious is part of AVOS, a new Internet company based in San Mateo, California.

For press inquiries, contact press@avos.com.

[VentureBeat]

Judge tweeted “Just met chief blogger at Tech Crunch.  Talked about the Crunchpad and saw a prototype.  Great looking device, think it will be a real hit.”  This just tells me a couple of things.  The Crunchpad may actually have a chance against a rumored upcoming Apple tablet computer.  And this also tells me that Best Buy seems to be a bigger fan of TechCrunch than he is with Gizmodo.

An hour before Judge tweeted meeting Arrington, he tweeted that he met YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley to discuss ways to better leverage the video website.  He also asked his followers for ideas on what other retailers do to use YouTube well.  Here’s my two word answer for Judge: viral videos.  The Improv Everywhere group hit over one million views in their viral video of sending a bunch of blue shirt, khaki wearing agents into a Best Buy store.

Co-founder of Netscape Jim Clark earned about $2 billion when his company had an IPO.  His son-in-law Chad Hurley made millions when he sold his company YouTube to Google.  And now Clark is officially married to Australian supermodel Kristy Hinze.  The wedding took place this past weekend.

Clark and Hinze’s wedding was a four-day event that took place on Richard Branson’s private Necker Island and the Virgin Gorda.  About 120 people attended the lavish affair and there was a no-shoe policy when riding on Clark’s yacht The Athena.  This is Clark’s fourth marriage and he turned 65 this past Monday.

Clark is the only man in history to have started three multi-billion dollar companies.  Clark is currently worth about $1.1 billion.

Hinze is the host of Project Runway in Australia.  She has been a model since age 14 and has graced the cover for Sports Illustrated.  Hinze is also a Victoria’s Secret model.

Hinze and Clark have been dating for several years now.  Clark was married to Forbes business reporter Nancy Rutter for 15 years.  Through the divorce, Rutter made about $100 million in cash, stocks, and bonds.  Rutter also received $24.6 million in property, $600,000 ownership stake in a Citation V jet, racehorses, furniture, and jewelry.  Hinze is 10 years younger than Clark’s own daughter.

[via NY Post]