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Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Exclusive First Look Into Twitter's New Office In New York City
Jared Harrell / BuzzFeed News
Earlier this year, Twitter's New York City operation completed a move into a brand new office at 245 West 17th St. in the city's Chelsea district. The move brought together four disparate offices -- located in New York's Midtown, Union Square, SoHo and NoMad neighborhoods -- into a single, 12-floor headquarters.
After San Francisco, New York is Twitter's second largest office, so the new NYC HQ will likely be a critical home for Twitter's business for years to come. It's already home to the team building one of Twitter's most important forthcoming products: Project Lightning.
Moreover, the New York office is a way to keep the company grounded. Having a big domestic operation outside of San Francisco's tech hothouse helps the company in several ways, but is especially valuable culturally and when it comes to recruiting. It's easier to meet people who don't work in tech in New York, and, conversely, it's easier to hire people who do work in tech there. It's also not a bad city to be in when you're in the media business.
On Monday, Twitter invited BuzzFeed News into the office, the first time it had shown it to the public. Here's what we saw.
Jared Harrell / BuzzFeed News
Twitter (naturally) works in an open-plan setup. There are no cubicles and managers sit together with their reports at long desks. Every other week, the office comes together for a "Local Tea Time" an all-hands bringing the entire building together to share thoughts.
Now that the office is up and running, celebrities visit regularly. Last week, Donald Trump stopped by. On Monday, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg paid a visit. The celebs often speak with Twitter's employees in open sessions, helping foster a sense of community more common in smaller companies. BuzzFeed News watched Hanks and Spielberg, for instance, lead the crowd in a chorus of "Happy Birthday" after a Twitter employee asked the two to send their wishes to her mother, a big fan.
Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg address Twitter's New York office
Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed News
More than 80 engineers work in the office, led by Vijay Pandurangan, a Director of Engineering. In an interview, Pandurangan discussed the projects the New York team is working on, including Project Lightning, some machine learning efforts, and the company's location-focused projects. The location part was especially intriguing.
New York is a cramped, highly-populated city with lots of buildings, so it's a great place to work on location functionality since the margin of error is very small. Pandurangan offered one scenario of a possible location-focused project the New York team might work on: "One of the things that could be cool is, for instance, [if] there's an earthquake in San Francisco and I open Twitter, wouldn't it be cool if it were pushed to the phone that, 'Oh, there's an earthquake near you.'" Twitter has no specific plans to build this exact product, Pandurangan said, but the example shows the type of work his team is thinking about.
Jared Harrell / BuzzFeed News
Jared Harrell / BuzzFeed News
Twitter New York keeps in touch with San Francisco and other Twitter offices via video conferencing technology, which is all over the office. "If you look around, I've worked strongly with the IT folks to really try and get it the point where it is ubiquitous," Pandurangan said. "It's enormously impactful in terms of our abilIty to execute."
Be careful, you may run into videoconferencing-Twitter-employee-robots too.
Vine, which Twitter acquired in 2012, is also in the building. The sub-50-person company-within-a-company sits on building's top floor. "We have many of the benefits of being a startup in that it's a small team, we have a big impact, we can move quickly, we have a strong culture, everybody knows each other," said Jason Toff, Vine's General Manager. "We also have the backing of one of the biggest tech companies in the world. We have access to their resources and knowledge so it's really the best of both worlds."
Jason Toff
Jared Harrell / BuzzFeed News
Vine's team is half engineering, Toff said, and then a mix of product, design, content, editorial, marketing, and operations. Vine relies on Twitter proper for some functions such as HR and Finance. It does not yet sell ads, so there is no sales team.
Instead of reporting into larger departments within Twitter, the heads of each department report into Toff and Toff reports to Kevin Weil, the Senior-VP of product at Twitter. "Kevin oversees design in addition to product and Periscope so it's more broad than what a normal product leader might encompass," Toff said.
Toff said living and working in New York City has helped him build a better product. "There's such a dramatic difference in the types of people that are on the team and that we encounter on a daily basis," he said. "In San Francisco, as much as I loved living there, I found that every single person I interacted with worked in tech, be it my neighbor, be it my Uber driver, be it my friends."
Jared Harrell / BuzzFeed News
"It's been really refreshing seeing people on the team and people you interact with on the subway and your neighbors and your friends who don't work in tech who are much more representative of the world. I think that leads to a better product," Toff said.
Pandurangan also spoke highly of the benefits that come along with operating in multiple cities. "You can get access to talent that you cannot get in the Valley," he said. "Some of it is because everybody is trying to hire people in San Francisco and there's lots of contention. Some of it is because you look at what you see with housing prices around [San Francisco] and how difficult it is to sustain yourself. A lot of that stuff can be alleviated by going to different cities and hiring the best engineers who are there."
Matt Derella
Jared Harrell / BuzzFeed News
Twitter VP of Sales Matt Derella met us in a simple yet elegant conference room for a quick discussion before our visit came to a close. "From marketing and media partners through to engineering talent and M&A opportunities, having a flagship office in NYC is of tremendous value," he said. Working out of New York provides easy access to the ad agencies of Madison Avenue, along with a line into the city's advertising technology industry, which works closely with Twitter.
Derella also brought us to a wall with a neon sign featuring a the hashtag #lovewhereyouwork. The hashtag, Derella said, originated in the company's London office, where a Twitter employee suffering from cancer tweeted it to thank her team for giving her her a knit blanket. Though the employee ultimately lost her fight with cancer, the hashtag lives on, Derella said. "We try to create a sense of family here."
At the elevator, we ran into none other than Mr. Steven Spielberg, who was also preparing his exit. The Academy Award winning director, who does not have a Twitter account, looked at the 'down' button before taking care of one last order of business: a smiling photo in front of the Twitter logo behind reception.
Lauren Zaser / BuzzFeed News
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SoFi's Billion Dollar Funding Round Is One Of The Biggest Ever
The online lender is one of just six American startups to ever raise $1 billion in a single funding round.
AP
One of the superstars of the online lending industry has raised $1 billion from investors, in one of the largest funding rounds ever for an American startup.
SoFi announced today that it was raising the new equity from Japanese technology conglomerate Softbank — a new investor — along with existing investors like the the hedge fund Third Point.
This comes after a $200 million round early this year that valued the company at just over $1 billion. While SoFi didn't disclose a valuation this time around, the Wall Street Journal reported in August that the Softbank investment would value the company at about $4 billion, making it the most valuable privately held online lending startup.
There has only been 19 venture capital funding rounds worth $1 billion or more, according to Pitchbook, which tracks the industry. Four of those were for Uber; just six American companies, including SoFi, have ever completed a billion-dollar round.
On Tuesday, online lender Avant said it had raised $325 million in a funding round that valued the company at $2 billion. Prosper, which mostly does personal loans to people with good credit scores, was valued at $1.9 billlion in its most recent round. Lending Club, another online lender, went public in December of last year and, despite its stock sinking below its IPO price, has a market capitalization of almost $5 billion.
SoFi, which was founded in 2011, started out refinancing student loans. That can be a great business in a growing economy, as many college graduates may be considered risky borrowers by traditional metrics (they have no income, for instance, and can have very large outstanding debts), but actually have good job and income prospects. When SoFi was founded in 2011, the first loans were to graduates of elite business schools like Stanford, where its founder, former Wells Fargo trader Mike Cagney, graduated from.
SoFi also expanded into mortgages late last year and now offers mortgages in 23 states. It started offering personal loans in February, and has begun selling those loans to investors.
"We have an aspiration to change banking and create an alternative solution to allow people to check out of the banking system entirely," Cagney said, mentioning wealth management and insurance as possible areas SoFi could enter.
But that won't be happening in the public markets, for now. After the company raised $200 million and garnered a billion-dollar "unicorn" valuation, there were reports that the company was considering an initial public offering.
But like so many fast-growing startups (Cagney says SoFi has been profitable for two years), they were able to raise a massive round from a new private investor and stay insulated from the public markets.
Cagney described Softbank as a "long term, patient capital partner" that told SoFi it was able to grow even faster than the company previously thought. "Personal and mortgage loans were growing ahead of schedule and we needed incremental capital to support that growth," Cagney said.
Lending Club "went out there and raised $1 billion publicly and they have to deal with the public," Cagney said. "We could raise $1 billion from the private investor."
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17 Not-Too-Scary Halloween Movies For People Who Are Easily Scared
Sometimes you just want to watch a Halloween movie and NOT have a heart attack.
If this is you watching scary movies...
...then you could probably use some movie suggestions for Halloween that AREN'T super scary. We got your back.
Dreamworks
Hocus Pocus (1993)
Hocus Pocus is most definitely a movie for kids, but the nostalgia factor for those who grew up watching it makes it a Halloween necessity. For other adults, the delight of watching Bette Midler, Kathy Najimi and Sarah Jessica Parker play the Sanderson sisters makes for good October entertainment.
Scariness Factor: ?
Disney
The Addams Family (1991)
The perfectly cast movie adaptation of the classic TV show makes for great family-friendly viewing around Halloween, especially since there are enough jokes in here to keep the grown-ups entertained. You could watch Addams Family Values too, but that's best saved for Thanksgiving.
Scariness Factor: ?
Paramount Pictures
Beetlejuice (1988)
Scary only in the most cartoonish, Tim-Burton-ish sort of ways, Beetlejuice sets the perfect tone for Halloween without specifically being a Halloween movie. Also, Michael Keaton is a national treasure.
Scariness Factor: ?
Warner Bros.
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Jack Dorsey To Be Named Permanent Twitter CEO
An announcement is expected as early as Thursday, Re/code reports.
Getty/Kimberly White
Jack Dorsey will be named permanent CEO of Twitter as early tomorrow, according to report published today in Re/code.
The move will bring to a close a painful, months-long search for a permanent CEO at Twitter, which has been without a permanent leader at the top since the departure of its former CEO Dick Costolo in July. Dorsey is expected to continue to run Square, a payments company where he also serves as CEO.
Dorsey, in his short tenure as interim-CEO, has been pushing big changes. Under his watch, the company has tested a 'News' tab, widely rolled out a 'Buy' button and is in the process of rethinking the service's 140 character limit.
As Dorsey moved things forward, the Twitter board worked slowly, eliciting criticism from Twitter investors and Wall Street analysts. The naming of Dorsey should quiet those critics, at least for the new CEO honeymoon period. After that, Dorsey will be forced to prove he can grow the company's userbase and, along with it, revenue.
Twitter and Square both declined comment.
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21 Frighteningy Fun Things To Do At Disneyland This Halloween
Disneyland is a blast in October — especially on Mickey’s Halloween Party nights.
Check out the outrageous and awesome costumes other park guests wear.
Spotting incredible people like the Alice in Wonderland family above is part of the fun of Mickey's Halloween Party Nights (which require a separate ticket to attend, it should be mentioned).
Ride Space Mountain — Halloween style.
"Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy" is described as taking brave souls "through a haunted section of space," but what that really means is that the freaky-looking face in the photo above will intermittently appear as a projection in front of you, screaming and reaching out for you. Warning: You might toss your Dole whip.
Paul Hiffmeyer
Visit as many trick-or-treat stations as you can without being overwhelmed by self loathing.
There are many spots throughout the park where cast members man glorious, candy-filled carts. They also hand-out some healthy options, too, like carrots, apples, and crackers.
Check out the Dia de los Muertos display.
This cool — and colorful — display features cheerful skeletons (including the fella above rocking a stand-up bass), sugar skulls and marigolds.
Paul Hiffmeyer
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Video Profile "Pics" Are Coming To Facebook
Revamped Facebook profile features a video profile picture option, temporary profile photos, and room for a short bio.
Starting Wednesday, the company is rolling out an option to post a video as your profile "picture." The feature will at first be only available to a small number of people using iOS in California and the United Kingdom. But Facebook hopes to launch it more broadly soon.
They will also likely make people's appearance on the platform appear less polished — a nod to social media's raw revolution.
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If D.W. From "Arthur" Had Snapchat
The Trailer For The New Season Of "The X-Files" Is Out, And It Is Intensely Awesome
The truth is still out there.
This trailer, uploaded by FOX, is our first glimpse into what the new season of The X-Files has to offer. And by the looks of it, we won't be disappointed.
The tenth season trailer opens up with a mysterious man (Joel McHale) showing up at Mulder's front door asking for his expertise.
FOX
After some solo sleuthing doesn't pay off...
FOX
... He calls up an old friend for some help.
FOX
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Some Lucky People Are Having Christmas Dinner In The Great Hall At Hogwarts
Update: The dinner event is now sold out :((( However, it’s not all bad news!
Warner Brothers
Warner Bros
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Who Was The Ultimate "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" Couple?
For a Hellmouth, there sure was a lot of lovin’.
Let's be honest, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the most iconic shows of all time.
The WB
And it created some pretty damn memorable romances too.
Bangel ❤️.
The WB
Remember the intense relationship between Spike and Drusilla?
The WB
Or the beautiful bond between Tara and Willow?
???
The WB
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23 Times The Sims Accurately Summed Up Being A Twentysomething
Things would be easier if rosebud or motherlode worked IRL.
When you graduate and you kinda have NO FREAKIN' IDEA what to do next.
EA Games
When your housemates start coupling up and you're like "lol, is there still room on the couch for me?"
EA Games
When you come home to a messy AF house and curse your housemates, because you're not their damn mother.
EA Games
When you're home alone and use it as an excuse to prance around and admire yourself.
EA Games
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Lea Michele Is Finding Life After "Glee"
Kevin Winter / Getty Images
For six years, Lea Michele and Rachel Berry — the unwaveringly determined Broadway baby she played on Fox’s musical-comedy Glee — were one and the same in the eyes of the show’s fans.
When they bought Rachel’s songs on iTunes, it was Michele’s voice they sang along to. When they watched Rachel learn to accept her flaws, it was Michele’s confidence they were witnessing. When Rachel mourned her boyfriend Finn Hudson by belting “Make You Feel My Love” through tear-filled eyes, it was Michele’s real-life loss of Cory Monteith they felt. They grew with Rachel, they learned alongside her, and they celebrated her successes.
“A lot of it was really cool,” Michele told BuzzFeed News of the writers’ penchant for pulling from her life for the character. “They wrote me the richest storylines … so I always felt, as an actor, incredibly satisfied.” But she was quick to add, with a laugh, “Although, if it were me, I would have never left Funny Girl.”
And if Michele had it her way, she may never have left Glee either. “There were very few of us who lasted the test of time on Glee. A lot of people dipped in and out towards the end, but there wasn't one episode I was not in,” she said. “And that's because I really wanted to be 100% at that job.”
Darren Criss, Lea Michele, and Chris Colfer in the Glee series finale
Fox
But in March 2015, Michele had to say goodbye to the character she’d become synonymous with, to the set she’d called home, and to the people she worked with since Glee began in 2009. “I'm very ritualistic, so for the month before leaving the show I did everything I wanted to do — I had my personal goodbye moments with each part of the set and with each person in the show,” Michele said. “What we did at the end of the show was, when they said, ‘That's a wrap on Glee,’ myself, Jon Groff, Kevin McHale, Chord [Overstreet], Amber [Riley], Becca [Tobin], Darren [Criss], and Chris Colfer sat on the stage — all by ourselves — in a circle and just reminisced. We all said what we loved about the experience. We really made sure that all of our goodbyes were thorough so I could leave that feeling good about the ending. I really mourned that loss in a very proper way so that once the show was done, I could leave and feel OK.”
The series finale showed Rachel Berry with a baby on the way and a Tony to her name. It was proof the character had a bright future in her dream industry, and now Michele is hoping the same will be true for herself.
“The reality is that Glee definitely created a great platform of fans for us, but the future is about sustaining that,” she said, repositioning herself in a giant leather club chair nestled in the corner of a back office at The Grove’s Barnes & Noble. “The future is about still doing a good job and not being one of those people who was on a successful TV show and then can't handle it anymore. I want to be at this place right now and sustain this little bubble in this business that I've created. I made this little nook here and I like it.”
But after playing Rachel Berry for more than 100 episodes, it wasn’t just Glee fans who had conflated Michele with her character — it was Hollywood as well. “I think there's definitely an issue with leaving such an iconic show, playing such an iconic character for so many seasons,” she said of the typecasting she confronted as she set out to find her first post-Rachel role. “I think that’s definitely an issue people face in this industry in trying to step into another job. So I was very conscious to make sure my next project was very different from Rachel Berry.”
Michele on Scream Queens.
Fox
Luckily she didn’t have to look too far or wait too long for that project to materialize. In January 2015, a month before production wrapped on Glee, Michele signed on to star on Fox’s horror-comedy Scream Queens from Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy. “I was definitely planning on taking a little bit of a break and giving people a chance to breathe between Glee, but when this opportunity came along, ‘no’ wasn't even an option,” Michele said of playing Hester Ulrich, an awkward, unpopular college student who sports an unmistakable neck brace and fends off the murderous Red Devil.
“Ryan is such a genius,” Michele continued of the man who became her boss once more. “He was really able to do exactly what I needed, which was to show people a completely different side of who I am and 100% erase — not that I want to erase Rachel Berry — but have people see me as someone else right out of the gate.”
Michele also has another project to keep her busy and showcase another side of herself, You First: Journal Your Way to Your Best Life. “Journaling for me was always goal-oriented,” she said. “I found that I was able to achieve more of my dreams by writing things down and manifesting them and making them happen.” Her second book covers fitness, diet, work, school, and relationships, all things Michele posts about on social media to her 10 million and counting followers. But whether she’s passing along fitness tips or demystifying the red carpet process, Michele said the underlying message of every single post is the same: Just be your best self, a mantra the 29-year-old works hard to be true to every single day.
Jason Merritt / Getty Images
“I always make sure that who I am in this business is a role model that everyone from my fans to my baby cousin to my mother can look and say, ‘She's doing the right thing,’” Michele said, leaning forward for emphasis. “I feel that in this business you're afforded with so many great opportunities and at that point, it's your choice what you do with those opportunities. I've chosen to always take this platform that I've been given and use it in as much of an aspiring and positive way. That's all I try to do. I've met a lot of people in this industry where you have an impression of who they are, and then behind the scenes it's completely different. I've always been the kind of person where what you see is what you get. This is who I am. What you see on social media is not a front, it's not fake; I really do live this way.”
And with You First now in stores and filming on the first season of Scream Queens nearing completion, Michele has begun to turn her attention to her next big project: her second album.
In 2014, Michele released Louder amid a swirl of high-profile publicity and omnipresent radio play for her lead single “Cannonball.” While the album debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 chart, her follow-up singles struggled to break through. But that’s because she had broken her No. 1 rule.
Michele with Barbra Streisand in February 2015.
Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images
“I don't feel like you hear Lea on that record,” Michele said of Louder, which was recorded in shoehorned bursts whenever she had time off from filming Glee. “I think I was blinded a lot by the excitement of making a record, the excitement of people sending me songs, and frankly, I felt the pressure to be like Katy, to be like Kelly, to be on the radio. And I don't care about that anymore.”
This time, Michele will produce the record she envisioned making long before Glee. “I am making a record that is 100% Lea Michele — it's theatrical, but still current; it's everything from the vibe of ’90s Celine Dion to Barbra Streisand. It's not about who I sound like anymore,” she said. “And if people love it, great — but all that matters to me is that it's me.”
It’s clear Michele is leaning on the lessons she learned over the last seven years of working late nights and long weekends, but more than anything else, she wants her career to be guided by the single principle she momentarily lost sight of.
“I am the biggest advocate for uniqueness and accepting your uniqueness, and it was such a lesson for me to realize that I didn't accept my uniqueness with my first record,” Michele said. “I've had great success in this industry by just doing things that were unique to me and that's exactly what I'm going to do now. I tried to mold myself to be like other people — and now, fuck that! I am just doing me, 100%!”
You First is now in stores and Scream Queens airs Tuesdays on Fox.
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Free Apple Music Trial Ends Today
Time to pay.
The much-hyped music streaming platform debuted with a three-month trial period during which Apple waived the $9.99 monthly fee it charges for the service. That offer was Apple's bid to get new users in the door, and pick up some market share from streaming music incumbents like Spotify.
Today, that free trial period ends for anyone who signed up for Apple Music on its first day, June 30. And it's time to decide whether or not it's worth paying for.
Apple is only going to charge you after a full 90 days.
Apple
Here's how to determine when you signed up.
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