Photo App Focus of Ribbing on Comedy Program

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‘What are the users of Snapchat ashamed of?” “Is this a sexting app?” “Have you guys made a profit, or does that disappear after 10 seconds, too?’

Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, co-founders of Venice’s Snapchat Inc., had to weather these and other cutting quips last week while under the klieg lights and in front of a TV audience.

The “kicker,” as the Snapchat boys would no doubt say, is that the inquest wasn’t delivered by a journalist or a tech panel moderator, but by comedian Stephen Colbert.

The host of the satirical “The Colbert Report” had the co-founders on to talk about their fantastically popular messaging app that lets people send photos and videos that quickly disappear. Though they were visibly nervous and stuttered through some responses – especially one about the company’s plans to, ahem, make money – the talk was always good-natured. Plus, they got to rattle off their mind-bending metric that 150 million messages a day are sent over Snapchat.

Spiegel and Murphy can also count themselves in good company: Other techies who’ve been a guest on Colbert’s show include Biz Stone of Twitter and Eric Schmidt of Google. And those companies are still around, right?

We reached out to Snapchat for any comment on their appearance, but didn’t hear back.

The Colbert interview ended with Spiegel and Murphy sending him a Snapchat live on TV. As far as great moments of technology happenings, it likely didn’t rank with the first transmission of a televised image or Steve Jobs’ “Hello World” moment at the unveiling of the Macintosh computer in 1984.

But it could be the first time a moment disappeared in 10 seconds or less.

Getting Viddy With It

Mobile gaming publisher Scopely Inc. has scooped up a new top executive, and the name should be familiar to the tech community. Chris Ovitz has joined the Hollywood firm as its head of business development, although he might be better known in his former role as co-founder of video streaming service Viddy Inc.

Ovitz split from Viddy a few months ago during a tumultuous period that saw the Venice company lose other key executives and lay off one-third of its employees. It was a surprising fall for a company that a year earlier had raised $30 million in venture capital.

Still, Viddy’s pain has been Scopely’s gain, at least when it comes to bringing on Ovitz, according to Scopely co-founder Walter Driver.

“We’re really excited to have Chris on with the company,” Driver said. “I’ve known and respected him for years but I never thought we’d ever have the opportunity to join forces.”

As it so happens, the two have known each other personally prior to working together; Driver has been friends with Ovitz’s sister for years. Ovitz is a son of former super agent Mike Ovitz, now an angel investor through Broad Beach Ventures.

At Scopely, Driver is hoping Chris Ovitz can tap into his experience in bringing external partners into the fold. It was something Viddy was quite good at – onboarding various celebrities including social media satyr Justin Bieber.

Outside partnerships are a growing part of Scopely’s new role as a game publisher. Not long after announcing the first group of game development studios it was working with, the company has already churned out a hit. Mini-Golf Matchup, by New Zealand gamemaker Rocket Jump, was released early last month and has topped the charts for Apple iOS and Android gaming apps. Driver said that the game has been downloaded more than 10 million times and signals the path for future Scopely releases.

“We want to be like the HBO of games,” Driver said. “You don’t need to like all the games, but know that it stands for a certain level of quality.”


Tech Titles

Mark Goldston of Woodland Hill’s United Online Inc. is set to resign as chief executive. The news came from a filing that announced the Web services firm was also going to be splitting off FTD, its floral delivery service, into a separate company. Once that transition is complete, Goldstone will be set to retire. He has been with the company since the late 1990s and began as chief executive of Web service provider NetZero Inc. … Joe Marchese is returning to Brentwood’s Social Vibe as chief executive. Marchese founded the online marketing company and has already served in the CEO position; he left in 2011 to work at cable TV network Fuse. He replaces Todd Tappin, who left SocialVibe early this year to work at West L.A. ad tech firm Rubicon Project. … Alan Gould was named chief executive at online survey firm USamp Inc. He replaces Matt Dusig, who will remain with the Encino company and serve as co-president along with Gregg Lavin.


Staff reporter Tom Dotan can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 263.

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