Silicon Alley

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Silicon Alley is a nickname for an area with a large concentration of Internet and new media companies in Manhattan, New York City. Originally, the term referred to the cluster of such companies extending from the Flatiron District down to SoHo and TriBeCa, but as the location of these companies spread out, it became a general term referring to the dot com industry in New York City as a whole.

The term was in most common use in the late 1990s, when companies such as Razorfish, and Agency.com became local success stories with successful IPOs. The first publication to cover Silicon Alley was @NY, a pioneering online newsletter founded in the summer of 1995 by Tom Watson and Jason Chervokas. The first magazine to focus on the venture capital opportunities in Silicon Alley, AlleyCat News co founded by Anna Copeland Wheatley and Janet Stites, was launched in the fall of 1996. Courtney Pulitzer branched off from her @The Scene column with @NY and created Courtney Pulitzer's Cyber Scene and her popular networking events Cocktails with Courtney. Silicon Alley Reporter started publishing in October of 1996. It was founded by Jason Calacanis and was in business from 1996-2001. @NY, print magazines, and the attending media coverage by the larger New York press helped to popularize both the name, and the idea of New York City as a dot-com center. In 1997, over 200 members and leaders of Silicon Alley joined NYC entrepreneurs, Andrew Rasiej and Cecilia Pagkalinawan to help wire Washington Irving High School to the Internet. This tremendous response and the Department of Education's growing need for technology integration marked the birth of MOUSE,an organization that today serves tens of thousands of underserved youth in schools in five states and over 20 countries. After the bubble burst, Silicon Alley Reporter was rebranded as Venture Reporter in September 2001 and eventually sold to Dow Jones. Self-financed AlleyCat News ceased publication in October 2001.