Apparently Zappos has been purchased by Amazon in an all stock transaction. Hat tip to TechCrunch and Sarah Lacy if this is accurate.

Zappos’ CEO, Tony Hsieh, wrote on Twitter 7 hours ago a quote from John F. Kennedy: “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

Update: Letter from Zappos CEO

“

We plan to continue to run Zappos the way we have always run Zappos — continuing to do what we believe is best for our brand, our culture, and our business. From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are switching out our current shareholders and board of directors for a new one, even though the technical legal structure may be different.

We think that now is the right time to join forces with Amazon because there is a huge opportunity to leverage each other’s strengths and move even faster towards our long term vision. For Zappos, our vision remains the same: delivering happiness to customers, employees, and vendors. We just want to get there faster.

We are excited about doing this for 3 main reasons:

1) We think that there is a huge opportunity for us to really accelerate the growth of the Zappos brand and culture, and we believe that Amazon is the best partner to help us get there faster.

2) Amazon supports us in continuing to grow our vision as an independent entity, under the Zappos brand and with our unique culture.

3) We want to align ourselves with a shareholder and partner that thinks really long term (like we do at Zappos), as well as do what’s in the best interest of our existing shareholders and investors.”

For more, read the rest here.

If you end up buying one, please link here as a thanks. Or if you just want to be kind please pass the info along.

Liftoff!

So I intended to start this blog a couple months ago and felt overwhelmed. I originally envisioned writing about technology in general but couldn’t concentrate enough on that gigantic topic. Then I thought I would start writing on PHP programming until I realized that was a little too narrow. After a Blogging FAIL, I’ve prepared some notes for other bloggers so they know how to start a blog:

1. Don’t choose a topic that is too broad (technology)
2. Don’t choose a topic that is too narrow (php programming)
3. Don’t procrastinate or put it on the back burner (wait 4 months to post)
4. Don’t start without at least 10 posts already written. This provides cover for days when you have no ideas but want to keep the momentum going.
5. Don’t care at first that you get no comments or nobody is reading what you are writing. Think of it as a journal until it isn’t.

-Jon Stewart

- Bill Clinton

How does it f igure out which blogger broke the story? This seems like a pretty complex problem but it comes down to human nature. When most bloggers find a new story, they will link back to the source. If you trace back the majority of the links to their endpoint, it will point in to the first blog that broke the news. Or at least that is how I think TechMeme figures it out.

Welcome to my new blog!