I’m delighted to announce that we’ve reached an agreement to acquire Tumblr!
We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve. Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster.
A lot of smart people have said a lot of smart things about this acquisition, so I won’t try to do the same.
Instead I will comment on the tone and language being used here: human English. I find that refreshing and delightful. While social media hasn’t made us more social, it has at least helped bring a human aspect to corporations - something that in its own way is helping to make the world a better place. This reads as human as something Sundance DiGiovanni would write, one of the communicators I respect a lot.
Sunset Speaks: Idra and EG: What We Should Have Talked About →
I like Idra. I liked him in Brood War and I liked him in SC2. The events that have transpired around him and his current situation will be remembered as a cornerstone in the history being created not only around his personal story, but the history being created around this great game of ours as a…
Great piece. I wish we had more writers like this.
I am not sure we would see any major eSports tournaments pick up games with functional chainsaws in this day and age. Which, when you think about it, is just wrong. Seriously.
Even curling would be fun if someone had a chainsaw.
(Source: laser-lobotomy, via cipater)
I was a guest on Climbing The Ladder earlier today, where I am proud to say that I propelled Chris and John to reach a phenomenal record: 1 hour and 42 minutes without a single interesting idea, fact or statement from a guest.
Ninjas in Pyjamas: it’s cold at the top.
eSports is full of crap (let’s stop the crap)
Over the years I have continuously laughed at the terrible business ideas I’ve seen in gaming. Some dude will take a mediocre idea and add “gaming” to it - and all of a sudden we have gaming nuts, gaming food, gaming apparel, gaming desks, gaming cables, gaming anything. It’s a joke.
You know that eSports is growing when we are now seeing the same trend. Copying concepts and ideas, and simply writing eSports somewhere in the name of a project, doesn’t make a valid business. It doesn’t make it a great idea.
And it certainly doesn’t mean that anyone will ever care.
ESL:
Jarret Cale with the rookie mistake: betting against Carmac. He lost the bet to get 13.337 followers on Twitter and had to perform Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance live on stage at the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship. The whole crew and players joined him for an epic morning ceremony.
So great.
Never trust anyone from Sweden.
Evil Geniuses isn’t just a great (e)sports team, it’s a world-class marketing team. This clip is above and beyond in insider humor, details and greatness. This is genius. And since it’s Astro, there’s even a hint of evil in it (see what I did there?).
Well done EG, really great.
IdrA wins twitter today.
ESL to pay out overdue prize money this month
ESL:
Over the last 12 years the ESL has paid out over $12,000,000 in prize money. Historically, there have been issues with some prize money being paid late. We have worked hard to eradicate these issues over the last 18 months and are now working on the final, remaining backlog of overdue prizes. We can announce today that this process will be completed by the end of February and there will be no overdue prize money at that point.
I have known many of the ESL guys for years (my god, so many years), but I had never thought about their work from this perspective: 12 million Dollars. That is a lot of money.
Even more impressive (to me): that is just one metric for their success. For me the first metric was their impressive live audiences, the second was really creating stability in teams during tournament seasons (a first for Counter-Strike back then).
We are taking this topic extremely seriously and to address any further concerns our CEO Ralf Reichert will conduct a Reddit AMA about this topic early next week.
Now that is Public Relations Magic 101. Awesome.
eSports will take over the United States with business sense, infrastructure, cash, and competition
I’ve only begun to report on eSports recently, and it’s taken a rather intense amount of research to learn about this world. The community has its own lingo, and both players and casters have their own tags, complete with randomly capitalized letters and masses of consonants.
It’s a scene that, for all its ambitions to break through to a wider audience, is incredibly insular.
While this may very well just be an indicator of one mans newly found interest, it could also be a symptom of wider adaptation: The Penny Arcade Report has been giving eSports a lot of focus recently.
But this is great, no matter the reason. Mr Kuchera is my favorite writer in gaming and PA Report produces editorial content way above industry average.
What happens to IPL?
According to sources close to the situation, News Corp. has almost completed the sale of its IGN gaming unit to Ziff Davis, which is now owned by J2 Global.
So.. What happens to IPL?
The Rise of Competitive Gaming and eSports.
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