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The amazing things going on in New York’s digital scene have finally bubbled their way up to the New York Times.

The thesis, essentially, is that Silicon Alley is back.  This isn’t surprising, considering that it never left.  But the last few years have indeed seen a major and more sustainable resurgence, one that is clearly here to stay.

Jenna Wortham, the writer, also mentions Caterina Fake’s observation about the most important difference between the New York tech scene and Silicon Valley’s, which is the relatively small number of folks who have previously been involved with wildly successful startups.

The startup game is distinctly different from Wall Street, consulting, mainstream media and other professions that have long dominated New York’s economy.  For those driven by money, it’s feast and famine, all or nothing.  Folks who have grown up in the cushy get-along-with-everyone-and-get-good-performance-reviews-and-you’ll-slowly-get-rich world of consulting, law, and Wall Street aren’t well-prepared for the “I worked my ass off for 5 years and then lost everything” world of startups.

What prepares people well for this world is being part of a culture that understands the startup process and values it.  What also prepares people well is being part of startup that worked, especially one that worked huge.  One of New York’s most successful tech companies, DoubleClick, has thrown off dozens of successful entrepreneurs.  The current generation of New York startups will do the same. 

As Caterina has noted, it would help immensely for the city to have a Google to call its own (although, with more than 3,000 people here, Google itself is serving this purpose). Even without one, however, New York’s digital scene is here to stay.  And as the old media industry crumbles, the new digital winners will increasingly rise up to dominate the city’s consciousness.

Here’s Jenna Wortham in the NYT:

THE two dozen or so people arranged around wooden tables, warming their hands and bellies with steaming mugs of coffee and plates of homemade biscuits, looked like just another Sunday brunch set in New York. But members of this group had braved knee-deep snow to gab about cutting-edge ideas and as they introduced themselves the roll call sounded like a Who’s Who of digital start-ups: Foursquare, Hot Potato, Six Apart, Flickr, Flavorpill, Trust Art, Vimeo.

“There’s a lot happening right here in our ZIP code,” said Dorothy McGivney, a former Google employee who is a co-coordinator of this group, the North Brooklyn Breakfast Club, and runs Jauntsetter, a travel site for women. Like the others, she had come to the brunch to help foster the growth of her little local community of entrepreneurs.

Keep reading at the NYT >

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See Also:

• OUTRAGE OF THE DAY: iPad Won’t Tether To The iPhone
• Here’s The Case For Being Bullish On Google Right Now
• WARNING: CNBC Advertiser May Be Scamming You

By Gabe Sherman at New York magazine. 

The message? 

Basically, at 79, Murdoch’s still going strong, reinvigorated by a new crusade to kill the arrogant “elite” at the New York Times.  And Google.

On Saturday, January 9, Rupert Murdoch was on his Boeing 737 returning to New York from a business trip to Los Angeles when he learned that the New York Times had just posted a long profile of Fox News chief Roger Ailes on its website, one that he knew was going to cause a giant headache.

Earlier that morning, Murdoch’s son-in-law Matthew Freud, the London PR executive who’s married to his daughter Elisabeth, had sent an e-mail to Murdoch’s BlackBerry (Murdoch only recently began using e-mail himself). “I’ve given a quote to the New York Times, and you’re probably not going to like it,” Freud wrote.

The quote lived up to its advance billing—and quite a bit more. “I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to,” Freud, the great-grandson of Sigmund, had told the paper. Certainly there was personal animus in the remark; in the left-of-center London social circles where Freud and Elisabeth operated, Fox is particularly loathed.

But the quote was also a salvo in a battle that had been raging around Murdoch for years. Is Fox News a disreputable cash cow, its reported $700 million in profit something to be tolerated with a held nose? Or is it central to the News Corp. mission? And questions like these lead directly to others: Who is Rupert Murdoch, really? And what does he want now?

Keep reading at New York >

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See Also:

• Krugman: Great News! The WSJ Is Becoming A Murdoch Propaganda Rag
• Rupert Murdoch Is Slowly Losing It, And His Unfocused Leadership Is Crippling News Corp
• Rupert Murdoch Is Off The Reservation Again

Will behavioral targeting kill content sites like this one? How are behavioral targeting companies – or social targeting – getting higher ROI for their customers?  Will behavioral targeting and other audience-versus-content targeting take over the world?

Henry Blodget discusses these questions with Tom Phillips, President & CEO, Media6Degrees, an audience targeting company.

• What does Media6Degrees do? What is social targeting?
• What is a ‘massive social graph’?
• How does context of ad serving matters?
• What kind of content sites work for advertising?
• The demographic stats are still important, but sociographics is growing strongly. 
• The information of how people use the Internet and how the connect in the digital realm is highly scalable and will replace demographics data for advertising.

Don’t miss an interview with Tom Phillips about the privacy issues of behavioral targeting:
– When Will Congress Finally Freak Out About Behavioral Targeting And Other Big Brother Web Tracking Techniques?

Produced By: Kamelia Angelova & William Wei

See more:
– How Do Advertisers Know Everything About You?

– Will Cost-Per-Lead Pricing Model Save The Banner Type Ads?

More Video: Click HERE >

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As always, Warren Buffett has woven some gems into his folksy discussion of Berkshire’s past year and crazy half-century of success.

This year’s letter includes:

• A body-slam of Wall Street CEOs who refuse to accept any responsibility for the huge risks that destroyed their firms
• The requisite story of a boneheaded mistake Warren made this year (charming and hardly boneheaded, as always)
• Advice for companies that actually want to get good advice from Wall Street
• An explanation of why CEOs are eager to overpay for acquisitions
• An explanation of how our government’s screwy housing policies are hammering some housing consumers and one of Berkshire’s companies
• An explanation of why Warren focuses on book value instead of his share price as a measure of his success
• Highlights of what you’ll be able to do at the Annual Meeting.

Let’s get right to it >

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See Also:

• Warren Buffett’s Annual Letter

After a member of his administration called his actions “unacceptable” and resigned today, Governor David Paterson is finally considering quitting the race.

The NYT:

“I am not suspending my campaign, but I am talking to a number of elected officials around the state, as I would, fellow Democrats, to give their opinion,” the governor said in a brief press conference Thursday evening. He added: “I’ve got an open mind about this thing. I want the Democrats to win in November.”

Whether he knows it or not, Gov. Paterson’s campaign is already over.  In the past two weeks, the New York Times’s revelations about his conduct have destroyed what little chance he had of getting re-elected. 

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See Also:

• IT BEGINS: Top Paterson Official Resigns, Calling Governor’s Actions "Unacceptable"
• The Other Monster Scandal From The NYT’s Latest Paterson Bombshell
• Another Paterson Bombshell: Sex, Violence, And Secret Police