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Paul Bradley Carr

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Sicaruma (talk | contribs) at 03:47, 14 July 2010 (→Bringing Nothing To The Party: removing 'daily', his blog isn't updated more than a hanful of times a month.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For other people named Paul Carr, see Paul Carr (disambiguation).
Paul Carr
Photograph of Paul Carr by Richard Moross
Photograph of Paul Carr by Richard Moross
OccupationWriter
NationalityBritish
Website
http://www.paulcarr.com

Paul Carr (born 7 December 1979) is a British writer, journalist and commentator, based in San Francisco. He has also - as Carr writes on his official website - "edited various publications and founded numerous businesses with varying degrees of abysmal failure."[1].

Bringing Nothing To The Party

Carr's autobiographical book Bringing Nothing To The Party - True Confessions Of A New Media Whore was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2008[2]. It tells the story of "a unique group of hard-partying, high-achieving young entrepreneurs - and [Carr's] attempts to join them, whatever the cost."[3]. According to one review, the book follows Carr's "journey from gonzo journalist, to accidental business owner, to accidental web business mogul, to very-near-jailbird, to working out what actually makes him happy in life."[4]

Carr writes a blog[5] on which he writes about new media, popular culture and his travels around the world as a technomad. The site also contains video and audio content.[6]

On 19 December 2009 Carr, in a controversial move, decided to release his book as a free ebook download on TechCrunch.[7] Carr is one of the first in the field to give away a published book as a free download, as most publishers specifically prohibit this. However, Carr owns the rights to the US version of the book (which is available on the Kindle), but wanted to appeal to those who didn't have a Kindle and wanted to read it. Carr decided to release his book online despite the fact that people geographically elsewhere might also download it (This is a problem because his publisher's parent company owns the digital rights to the book outside of North America.) The ebook can also be downloaded directly from Carr's website[8].

Satirical Writing

In 2001, while studying law[9] at university, Carr co-founded and Edited the award-winning satirical "comment sheet" The Friday Thing.[10].

In 2002, The Christian Scientist described Carr as a "latter day Jonathan Swift" following the publication of his satirical anti-vigilante manifesto "Think of the Children"[11]. In the same year, Carr co-founded the London city guide, London by London[12].

He has also written for television, most recently for Alison Jackson's Doubletake series[13].

New Media Writing

In July 2009 it was announced[14] that Carr will be writing a weekly column for technology news site TechCrunch and also blogging regularly for the Telegraph newspaper.

Prior to joining TechCrunch[15], Carr wrote his weekly column for the The Guardian newspaper, where it was entitled Not Safe For Work[16] and followed his adventures in the technology industry. Between 2003-2005 he wrote a regular new media column for Media Guardian [17].

Carr has also authored a series of nine web guide books for Prentice Hall[18] as well as co-authoring The Unofficial Guide To Second Life published by Pan Macmillan (UK) and St Martin's Press (US) in 2007[19].

Carr is a regular user of Twitter[20].

The Friday Project and Entrepreneurship

In 2005, along with Clare Christian, Carr co-founded The Friday Project[21], a book publishing house specialising in finding material on the web and then turning it into traditional books.

Carr left The Friday Project in December 2006[22] along with Online Editor, Karl Webster, to lead a buy-out of the company's Internet media arm, which lead to the founding of online city site, Fridaycities.com[23]. Carr left Fridaycities in 2007, when the site rebranded as Kudocities.[24]. He later described himself as "NSFW" (Not Safe For Work).[25].

Footnotes

  1. ^ "About Paul Carr". Official Site. 2008-05-01.
  2. ^ Carr, Paul (2008). Bringing Nothing To The Party. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
  3. ^ "Bringing Nothing To The Party". Orion Books. 2008-07-01.
  4. ^ "Book Review: Bringing Nothing To The Party". New Media Knowledge (University of Westminster). 2008-08-09.
  5. ^ Paul Carr: True Confessions of a New Media Whore
  6. ^ "Author interviews publicist about book". Publishing News. 2008-08-01.
  7. ^ "NSFW: Free as in "my publisher will disown me after I pirate my book on TechCrunch"". Techcrunch. 2009-12-19.
  8. ^ "Bringing Nothing To The Party Downloadable Ebook"". Paul Carr. 2009-12-20.
  9. ^ "That Friday Feeling". The Bookseller. 2006-06-09.
  10. ^ Gibson, Owen (2002-02-18). "That Friday feeling". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  11. ^ Left, Sarah (2002-10-02). "Satirical website escapes closure". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  12. ^ Revill, Jo (2007-02-12). "A site for TV execs and tea ladies". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  13. ^ "The Secret Election". BBC Online comedy guide. 2005-05-22.
  14. ^ "'Goodbye, farewell and amen to Not Safe For Work'". London: The Guardian. 2009-07-23. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  15. ^ "'The Guardian has slashed its freelance budget. Result - no more column from me. Thought about writing it for free, but meh.'". Twitter. 2009-07-13.
  16. ^ "Not Safe For Work". London: The Guardian. 2008-11-12. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  17. ^ "The Bloggers Shall Inherit The Gonzo". London: The Guardian. 2005-02-28. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  18. ^ "The Very Best Family Web Sites from Zingin.com". Pearson Education. 2001-01-01.
  19. ^ "Pan Macmillan author biography". Pan Macmillan. 2007-03-22.
  20. ^ "Paul Carr's Twitter Stream". Twitter.com. Retrieved 2009-07-13.
  21. ^ "That Friday Feeling". The Bookseller. 2006-06-09.
  22. ^ "Paul Carr leaves the Friday Project".
  23. ^ Revill, Jo (2007-02-12). "A site for TV execs and tea ladies". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  24. ^ Carr, Paul (2008). Bringing Nothing To The Party. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 271.
  25. ^ "About Paul Carr". Official Site. 2008-05-01.
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