Valleywag: twitter

No one told Cisco employees Scoble was talking to them

Owen Thomas — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:40:00 PDT

Fast Company videoblogger Robert Scoble, embracer of new technologies and young women, has informed Twitter users everywhere that he is "talking to all Cisco employees this morning ... about the latest Web collaboration stuff." Whom he has not informed: Cisco employees everywhere. "My inbox and trash have no mention of 'scoble' anywhere," a Cisco worker bee tells us. Well, duh — the announcement must have gone out on FriendFeed.

Obviously fake Tina Fey Twitter account annoys Internet

Owen Thomas — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:20:00 PDT

This can't be real, can it? Since last week, a sporadically updated Tina Fey account on Twitter has seen more action, with more-frequent messages emanating from the supposed 30 Rock star and Saturday Night Live veteran. But whoever's updating it is far from clever enough to imitate Tina Fey. Unless this is actually Fey doing a bad impression of herself, thereby demonstrating how moronic most Twitter's users seem in the 140-character format the microblogging service limits them to. That's an idea actually funny enough to come from the mind of Tina Fey.

How to keep your company from looking stupid on Twitter

Paul Boutin — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:00:00 PDT

San Francisco-expat turned LA PR pro Jeremy Pepper wrote a long post documenting his exploration of Twitter as a company communications channel with the outside world. The advent of Twitter hasn't changed this much: I can still get paid to take a two page long, rambling essay by an expert and rewrite it to fit on a Post-It slapped to your monitor:

DO appear on Twitter as a real person. Be like comcastcares, not Wachovia.
DON'T let your PR firm do the tweeting. A customer-facing employee like comcastcares is best.
Who to follow:
DO follow people who follow your company's account.
DO follow people who tweet about the company more than once.
DO follow people who talk about the company's space.
DO reply to people who direct-message you. Be engaged and responsive. Be personable. There's nothing worse than sending someone a direct message on Twitter ... and hearing nothing back.

Scoble blames you for the breadlines, Tony

Paul Boutin — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:40:00 PDT

FriendFeed is the best Scoble-tracking technology ever. Without it, I'd never have caught his blurt-out reply to PopTech conference cofounder Anthony Citrano: "Breadlines are coming and I'll personally blame people like you ... celebrating on the backs of the working suckers who will now get laid off." Hey, I'm one of those working suckers. Writers don't get laid off — we get unpublished in advance.

Twitter debate traffic says Iraq, Iran, Russia are top issues

Paul Boutin — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:20:00 PDT

Twitter cofounder Biz Stone posted a chart showing the frequency of political keywords during Friday night's McCain/Obama debate. "Iraq" hit the highest rate of tweeting at a given moment during the event, followed by "tax" and then "Korean" after John McCain deemed North Korea "a huge gulag" that stunts its citizens' growth by three inches. But the trick to reading a chart like this is to look not at the height of the lines, but the surface area under them — that's how you measure the total number of tweets for that keyword. Iraq and taxes look to be the biggest. But Stone's chart shows Iran and Russia, not Koreans, are what everyone's tweeting about.

Wired lauds Current TV for copying CNN

Melissa Gira Grant — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:00:00 PDT

Current TV's Twitter-enhanced live feed of the Obama/McCain debate on Friday "broke new ground," according to Wired blogger Sarah Lai Stirland. But it's been nearly a month since the September 8 premiere of CNN's Rick Sanchez Direct, in which Sanchez turns the camera on Twitter for the modern version of man-on-the-street quotes. How it works: You add Rick. He adds you back. You then tweet live during his show. He may pullquote you, or run the live stream onscreen. Sanchez, currently following nearly 18,000 people, already drew attention for his live tweet-reading during Hurricane Gustav, when Twitterers filed reported facts to millions of viewers.

Current and Twitter's debate stream was interesting, but not new. Mashable and VentureBeat covered the launch of Sanchez's show three weeks ago, noting that CNN's arrival had forced Twitter's management to exempt Sanchez, like Robert Scoble, from their usual limit on the number of feeds one user could follow.

If you thought Current's lazy stream of debate tweets was hot, watch the above compilation of the always-slighty-overexuberant Sanchez: "My Twitterboard's about to explode." (Video by 23/6)

Why won't Al Gore use Twitter?

Paul Boutin — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:40:00 PDT

Missed opportunity: Current TV founder Al Gore dropped in on the start of Friday's "Hack the Debate" event, a partnership with Twitter. Attendees were invited to post updates to Twitter during the debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. Current flashed selected tweets onto the screen over a live feed of the debate. Wired dubbed it groundbreaking. Social media consultant Shel Israel complained the result was "just a bunch of young people making shallow comments." But either way, where was Gore?

After giving a short speech to attendees, in which he praised their efforts to break the "feudal" system of network television, Gore promised "By tomorrow, I'll be on Twitter." Then he left. Come on, Al. How hard would it have been to sign up for Twitter on the spot, then stick around for a few minutes to lob an inconvenient truth or two across John McCain's puss during the opening leg of the debate? Instead, here's the message Gore sent: Twitter is for kids. (Video by Laughing Squid/Scott Beale)

Al Gore's Twitter account still a secret

Jackson West — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:00:00 PDT

So Al Gore, who cofounded Current TV, promised to have a Twitter account by Saturday. It's Monday, and the algore and albertgore account don't look anything like they're being maintained by the former American vice president and current free marketeer. If you find him under shouldawon00 or some other catchy handle, do let us know. I couldn't find anything from his wife Tipper, either — tipper is a Twitter bot for calculating tips, and tippergore doesn't exist. And it's for shame. Because how fun would it be if they really embraced the medium, instead of just showing up to press the flesh at staged events? Below, pure speculation as to what we all have to look forward to.

The Scoble 165 -- you're not on it

Paul Boutin — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:20:00 PDT

If you follow Robert Scoble at all — and you sort of have to unless your DSL is dead — you know he can't help overproliferating everything he does. While the entire staff of Vanity Fair takes months to assemble its 100 most powerful list, Fast Company's token webhead spews 165 names in one pass for his "hand-picked list of the people who provide the most interesting tech blogging/tweeting/FriendFeeding." Robert, let me put on my old Condé Nast editor's hat and redline this back to you: GREAT START, BUT PLS TELL US WHO THE FK THS PPL ARE:

Aaron Brazell
Adam Lasnik
Alana Taylor
Alex Albrecht
Alex Williams
Allen Stern
Andrew Baron
Andru Edwards
Andy Beal
Andy Ihnatko
Anthony Citrano
Ben Metcalfe
Benjamin Higginbotham
Bhaskar Roy
Bret Taylor
Brian Shields
Brian Solis
Charlene Li
charles cooper
Charles Hudson
Chris Brogan
Chris Messina
Chris Nuttall
Christopher Allen
Christopher Galtenberg
Chuq Von Rospach
Colide81 (James)
Corvida
Craig Eddy
Craig Newmark
Cyndy
dan farber
Dan Fernandez
Danny O’Brien
dannysullivan
Dare Obasanjo
Darren Barefoot
dave mcclure
Dave Morin
Dave Taylor
Dave Winer
David Armano
David Sifry
David Swain
david weinberger
debbie landa
Deborah Micek
Dion Almaer
Doc Searls
Don Dodge
Don MacAskill
Duncan Riley
Dwight Silverman
Ed Bott
engadget
Erhan Erdogan
Eric Eldon
Francine Hardaway
Fred Wilson
Gabe Rivera
Harry McCracken
Hutch Carpenter
James Kendrick
James Urquhart
Jason Falls
Jay Rosen
Jeff Jarvis
Jeremiah Owyang
Jeremy Toeman
Jesse Stay
Jessica Guynn
Joe Wilcox
John Furrier
Joi Ito
Joshua Dilworth
joshua schachter
Justin Korn
kamla bhatt
Kara
Karim
Karsten Januszewski
Keith Teare
Ken Camp
l0ckergn0me
laura “@pistachio” fitton
Liz Gannes
Long Zheng
Lora Heiny
Loren Heiny
Louis Gray
Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins
Mark Trapp
Marshall Kirkpatrick
Mashable
mathew ingram
Matt Cutts
Mediabistro.com
michael arrington
Michael Krigsman
Michael Wesch
mike “glemak” dunn
Mike Butcher
Mike Cannon-Brookes
Mike Cassidy
Mike Doeff
Mike Fruchter
MikeAmundsen
Mitchell Tsai
Molly E. Holzschlag
Nir Ben Yona
noah kagan
Nova Spivack
Omar Shahine
Ontario Emperor
Patphelan
Paul Buchheit
paul mooney
Paul Stamatiou
Paul Thurrott
Pete Blackshaw
Pete Steege
Peter Semmelhack
Rachel Clarke
Rafe Needleman
Rebecca MacKinnon
Richard Binhammer
Rob Bushway
Robert Hof
Robert Sanzalone
Rodney Rumford
Roger Kondrat
Ryan Block
Scott Beale
ScottBourne
sean percival
seth goldstein
Shel Israel
slashdot
Steve Broback
steve clayton
Steve Garfield
Steve Gillmor
Steve Lacey
Steve Outing
Steve Rubel
Steven Hodson
Stowe Boyd
Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
susan mernit
Susan Scrupski
Svetlana Gladkova
Tamar Weinberg
Terry Heaton
Thomas Hawk
Thomas Vander Wal
Tim O’Reilly
Todd Cochrane
Tom Foremski
Tom Merritt
Warner Crocker
Werner Vogels
Woody Pewitt
Yaron Samid
zefrank
Zoli Erdos
~C4Chaos

(Photo by Brian Solis)

John McCain will debate, Twitter's new site tells us over and over

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:40:00 PDT

The Twitter people have created a new site that aggregates user messages about the election. We think we had this before: It was called Twitter. Like cable news, it's a very useful way to learn the same thing over and over again. In this 40-second clip, for example, 10 users inform us that John McCain will debate Barack Obama tonight. Exactly what politics needs: more echo, less chamber.

Congress reaches tentative agreemeent -- over Twitter messages

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:20:00 PDT

Washington legislators seem to have reached a delicate bipartisan consensus regarding the topic of the day: It's OK for Senators to communicate with their constituents via Twitter. During the summer, a Democrat House member proposed rules that would require members of Congress to disclose in all Web-communicated message whether or not they were communicating in an official capacity. Republicans balked, complaining that since sites like Twitter only allow 140 characters, they wouldn't have room to include a disclosure.

Since then, the debate moved into subcommittees before finally reaching the Senate, which according to Congress Daily, decided that Senators may "maintain Web sites or post material on third-party platforms" so long as those sites "agree to disclose when content is maintained by a Senate office" and communications do not contain "commercial or political material or links to an office-maintained page." Day of chaos, averted, indeed.

Timeline of a Twitter outage

Melissa Gira Grant — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:00:00 PDT

TWITTER IS DOWN NOW IT'S NOT OH MY GOD. A nightmare in screenshots!

1 minute. Withdrawal! Confusion! Meta!

3 minutes. Brian Conley, live from Tumblr! Fear his angry "back side"!

7 minutes. Twitter's gothically geeky operations engineer John Adams implores you, put your pitchforks down.

Another naked conversation with Scoble

Owen Thomas — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:00:00 PDT

JAMESON'S IRISH BAR, BOSTON, MASS. — If you'd gotten over that unclothed photo of Robert Scoble and Naked Conversations coauthor Shel Israel, here's a new one to haunt your memories. Scoble, Fast Company's pet videoblogger and social media guru, was in Boston for the EmTech conference, and he wanted to go to a bar. Why? So he could sit at a table and ignore everyone around him, constantly reloading FriendFeed, the Web-activity tracker on which he relentlessly documents his nonparticipation in the world which surrounds him. Two startup executives who had just watched the Red Sox play at Fenway Park with Scoble told me he Twittered nonstop through his visit to the Green Monster. The only time he was separated from his iPhone? When he lent it to me to take a picture of him. That didn't turn out, but I found another pic Scoble had taken of himself, fresh out of the shower.

Technology Review editor addicted to Twitter, gossip

Owen Thomas — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 06:00:00 PDT

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — I'm here in the hub of the universe for EmTech, a conference thrown by Technology Review, MIT's magazine of self-importance. Jason Pontin, who is the magazine's editor-in-chief, publisher, and whatever title he's added last week, has just introduced Vinod Khosla, one of the venture-capital industry's brightest names. But is Pontin gazing raptly at Khosla, taking in his every word of wisdom? No, he is not. I can see his laptop screen from six rows away. He is using Twitter, a recent topic of obsession for him. This grand chronicler of innovation is whiling away the duration of Khosla's presentation 140 characters at a time. Oh, wait! I take that back. Now he's reading Valleywag.

New York Times discovers a venture capitalist

Owen Thomas — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:00:00 PDT

Fred Wilson's venture-capital firm, the paper of record tells us, "has built its portfolio making small bets on young companies." That is an excellent definition of early-stage venture capital. But is Wilson, of Union Square Ventures, to be congratulated with a glowing New York Times profile merely for doing his job? Apparently so. The real thing that distinguishes Wilson from his peers are not his practices or his profits; it is his prolixity. Wilson writes a blog read by some 25,000 people a month. Newspaper reporters can relate to him as a wordsmith rather than a financier. Also, he is in New York, which makes him geographically convenient for the media capital. The news event which prompted this profile?

Wilson gave a speech last week in Manhattan. In other words, there was no reason to run the story. What's really going on? Wilson himself explains: The Times had this piece in the works for weeks. My theory: Editors there felt it needed to run soon, before the sector Wilson favors — hipsterish Web startups like Twitter and Etsy — suffered some embarrassing disaster.

(Photo by Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times)

Worried about Twitter? So was Socrates

Melissa Gira Grant — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:40:00 PDT

Today in Twitter Journalism, it's our man at the Times, Damon Darlin. You've probably heard about, but haven't read, lovable IT crank Nick Carr's anti-Internet essay, "Is Google Making us Stupid?" Darlin helpfully pares Carr's 4,175-word article down to a single tweet. Then, contrary to what you'd expect from the Gray Lady's newsroom, he says there's a basic human fear over new communications technologies that goes all the way back to the original master of irony. We fed Darlin's essay into our shiny new 100-word-version machine:

Maybe you are thinking that Twitter, not Google, is the enemy of human intellectual progress. It is hard to think of a technology that wasn’t feared when it was introduced. Socrates feared the impact that writing would have on man’s ability to think. The advent of the printing press summoned similar fears. Professors feared that engineers would use the HP-35, the first hand-held scientific calculator, as a crutch.

For all the new technologies that increase our productivity, there are others that demand more of our time. That is one of the dialectics of our era. With its maps and Internet access, the iPhone saves us time; with its downloadable games, we also carry a game machine in our pocket. But the engineer’s point of view puts trust in human improvement: writing, printing, computing and Googling have only made it easier to think and communicate.

Oh, and we tidied the author's bio: Damon Darlin is not on Twitter.

"You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter"

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:00:00 PDT

Here's a song from Ben Walker called "You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter." YouTube featured the video on its front page, so the video has many more comments and views — 185,711 views at last count — than it would otherwise.

Many of the 367 commenters seem to have no idea what Twitter is. "Guess I'm a figment of my own omagination [sic]. I've never heard of Twitter. " writes AdmiralGreenscreen in remarkable English for a YouTuber. "neither have I thank god," says flybreath.

Just another attention/fame/pseudo fame/friend/dating pile of crud site that everyone says you have to join or you're no one, in other words - a free thinking, unique individual who has reasonable fun on and knowledge of the Internet knows it's all toss :)

Here are the lyrics if you'd like to sing along.

You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter
And if you aren’t there already you’ve missed it
If you haven’t been bookmarked, retweeted and blogged
You might as well not have existed

In the old days it was all about achievements
Collecting all your trophies in a shrine
Then everybody came across the internet
And suddenly you had to be online

A home page was all you really needed
To seem like a success but not a geek
As long as you updated semi-annually
And checked your email once or twice a week

You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter…

Technology was moving rather quickly
And the next thing you needed was a blog
With intimate and detailed press releases
And now and then a photo of your dog

More recently the students brought us Facebook
And everybody has a hundred friends
The parties in the photos look amazing
They’re not so great but everyone pretends

You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter…

Now you need to publish every movement
And every single thought to cross your mind
I’m told the Twitterverse is full of rubbish
But most of us are actually quite refined

We validate each other’s insecurities
And brag about the gadgets that we’ve bought
We laugh out loud at every hint of jolliness
And try to self-promote without being caught

You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter…

Rocky Mountain News ends deadly boring funeral Twitters

Jackson West — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:20:00 PDT

Denver's Rocky Mountain News is having more trouble with the newspaper's grand experiment in using Twitter as a reporting tool. Reporting tool? Twitter is for oversharing and posting links to ninja cat videos on YouTube. Even before the fishwrap was sending reporters to tweet updates from a child's funeral, it had set up a Twitter feed to let reporters send updates from the action at the Democratic National Convention. One hack from Scripps Howard sent an update that included the word "fucker," and to scrape the term from the site editors had other reporters flood the site with tweets to push the obscenity off the page. At least we won't have to worry about a reporter cussing mid-funeral.

It wasn't public outcry that convinced the editors to stop asking reporters to post morbid 140-character updates. Instead it was a staffer with a sense of discretion and a little humanity who raised concerns that experimenting with new medium during a memorial service for the victim of a tragic accident isn't in the best of taste.

(Photo by Evan Sims

Porn consultant teaches you to use Twitter so we don't have to

Melissa Gira Grant — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:40:00 PDT

It says a certain sad something that there's a whole consulting market in explaining how to use Twitter. They see the microblogging tool as just another outlet for "deep brand penetration." None more penetrating than adult-entertainment consultant Callie Simms, who's able cut to the quick of how Twitter is being used to inform and annoy. It should be mandatory for all future "new media" webinars to include her advice: "Talk about things in your industry. No, I don’t care what dildo was up Tera’s ass, talk about trends."

No sidewalk is safe for Mark Zuckerberg

Melissa Gira Grant — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:00:00 PDT

The next update on his whereabouts had better be from his gym. (Can you even waddle in shower shoes?)

Unconference made unbearable by unattendees

Paul Boutin — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 10:40:00 PDT

Friday's Bear Hug Camp, a software developer's meetup to discuss Twitter-like "microblogging" services, proved Internet commenters can prickle even the grizzliest Web 2.0 advocate. "Steve Gillmor decided to look at feedback on the Twitter and Identica services," a tipster emailed. "After reading out loud multiple comments calling him an A**hole, as well as other choice words, Gillmor commented he didn't want to do this anymore and made Leo Laporte take over, despite Leo's plea for him to stay." We waited for the video. It takes forever to watch, so here's the summary: At 11:40 into Session 3, Gillmor packs up and walks off ("OK, take care..."), leaving the event in the hands of Laporte, a TV host turned videoblogger, but he returns at 1:22:15 to take over an API whiteboarding session. You can check out any time you like, Steve, but you can never leave.

Editor doesn't apologize for reporter Twittering at toddler's funeral

Jackson West — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:00:00 PDT

"Yes, there are going to be times we make mistakes, just as we do in our newspaper," Rocky Mountain News editor John Temple explains of his paper's decision to have reporter Berny Morson send public Twitter updates live from the funeral of three-year-old Marten Kudlis, who was killed when a driver crashed into an ice cream shop in Aurora, Colo. Temple stops well short of apologizing for any lapse in judgment. But the people he should apologize to are the paper's owners. Newspapers are a business, and if children bleed, the story leads to a lot of advertising inventory. When the print business model is dying, why is it giving away pageviews to Twitter instead of liveblogging on its own website?

Business pubs get more stylish, social to appeal to Facebookers

Jackson West — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 05:00:00 PDT

The venerable Wall Street Journal has given up trying to age gracefully after being purchased by News Corp., and today the bandages will come off on a facelift that took six months to complete. The main difference will be that non-subscribers will get a more general-interest homepage full of links to free lifestyle content, while subscribers will have the page tailored to emphasize business news. But sixty percent of the site's traffic never sees the homepage, and pageviews-per-unique visit are actually falling. So bring on the social network!

Meanwhile, just as the Journal is trying to expand its readership beyond managers and executives with expense accounts, Slate is introducing The Big Money — billed by the New York Times as "a Business Site for the Facebook Set," which includes a Journal-watching Twitter feed. Because as we all know, the Facebook set doesn't like to read anything over 140 characters.

sample032

Alaska Miller — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:40:00 PDT

Twitter is now creeping into weirder territories with the revelation of funeral tweeting. Is there an etiquette rule for this? Unless Miss Manners starts using Twitter, we may never know. Either way, sample032, today's featured commenter, has thought up a novel way for Twitter to start making revenue. Excuse me for a second while I don my flame-retardant suit for this one:

If twitter let users have adsense on their accounts, he would have make a killing, ah, what the hell, pun intended.

Jason Calacanis has no idea how much vodka he drank last night

Jackson West — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:00:00 PDT

The closing party for TechCrunch50 kicks off tonight, and our spy will be bringing us live updates as the evening unfolds. Hungover organizer Jason Calacanis, who got so sauced he couldn't remember what city he was in last night and showed up late this morning, was offered a bottle of Finnish vodka from a wantrepreneur, soliciting a bit of a reprimand from TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington — who also demanded that Calacanis delete his drunken postings to Twitter (Calacanis complied).

Email is destroying our productivity, warns Twitter advocate

Paul Boutin — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:20:00 PDT

"Email becomes a dangerous distraction," headlines a guest column by an "expert in collaboration and communications" in the usually tech-savvy Sydney Morning Herald. If you check mail every five minutes, you lose eight hours a week of mental concentration, according to some glib algebra done on the results of a study. The cure for distracting email conversations? "Twitter ... instant messaging ... wikis ... blogs." You've guessed this already, but allow me to edit the author's bio for clarity: Suw Charman-Anderson is a freelance social software consultant.

Assume Twitter has four or five plans to make money

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:00:00 PDT

New York venture capitalist Fred Wilson is sick of answering questions about how his firm's most notable investment, Twitter, will ever make money. "The No. 1 question I get about Twitter is, how do you monetize it?" Wilson told the Deal's Alain Sherter. He continued:

Twitter is no different from other user-generated content, like Flickr, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Blogger, WordPress, TypePad. Those businesses are good businesses. People who can't wrap their heads around trying to monetize these businesses aren't trying that hard. It would be naive to assume that the management teams of Twitter or FriendFeed or Disqus don't have four or five strategies for monetization in their business plans that they are evaluating.

Salesforce.com ready to buy Geni's corporate Twitter clone

Alaska Miller — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:20:00 PDT

Twitter was an offshoot of Odeo, an otherwise unpromising podcasting startup. Yammer, a Twitter clone launched at the TechCrunch50 conference, even copied the origin myth; it sprang from the loins of Geni, the $100 million genealogical website started by former PayPal executive David Sacks. Like Facebook, users sign up with their work email address as a way of verifying that they're employed by a company. Yammer's positioned as a tool for coworkers to keep track of each other's status, with features missing in Twitter such as threaded comments, tags, and messages longer than 140 characters. Even more interesting: In a panel following the demonstration of the site, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said he's interested in buying the whole thing. At last, something resembling an exit for Geni.

What does online gossip profit us?

Melissa Gira Grant — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:00:00 PDT

In an upcoming New York Times magazine, already teased online, Wired contributor Clive Thompson argues that Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr are not alienating us from one another as human beings, as social-network fearmongers claim. We're just becoming more digitally intimate, present in the lives of our 500 "friends," one update at a time. “Sometimes I think this stuff is just crazy, and everybody has got to get a life and stop obsessing over everyone’s trivia and gossiping,” a 20something Facebook user Thompson interviewed said. We know how well that goes.

We can't stop — and that's okay, Thompson writes:

Ahan knows that she cannot simply walk away from her online life, because the people she knows online won’t stop talking about her, or posting unflattering photos. She needs to stay on Facebook just to monitor what’s being said about her. This is a common complaint I heard, particularly from people in their 20s who were in college when Facebook appeared and have never lived as adults without online awareness. For them, participation isn’t optional. If you don’t dive in, other people will define who you are.

This is the geek utopia of socialization, Thompson explains: Every time you Twitter a complaint about your head cold, upload a photo of yourself making a squishface, or comment on a story you read, you draw your new social circle in closer.

But to what end? While we make pals, others are making money. Thompson argues that Facebook's News Feed, introduced in 2006, revolutionized friendship. Perhaps. But a year later, Zuckerberg spoke before a Madison Avenue crowd and made clear that what he really wanted to do was revolutionize advertising.

With Zuckerberg's visionary skills, perhaps he can do both. Ideally, he'd just collapse commerce and conviviality into a single phenomenon. If you can't stop gossiping about yourself, why not at least profit from it? Twitter and Facebook could drop the question "What are you doing?" in favor of "What are you selling?" That seems clearer.

(Photo by Dominic Campbell)

Jimmy Wales and the art of the modern breakup

Owen Thomas — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:40:00 PDT

Another failed relationship, another awkward online parting of ways for Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia. Just a few months ago, he was squiring new-agey PR impresario Andrea Weckerle, a self-described "global nomad," around the world. Now, insiders say, Weckerle has dumped Wales — you can tell, because she no longer follows his Twitter updates. The puzzle here: How does he put so much energy into chasing women when he's supposedly leading the world's largest collection of unfactchecked assertions backed up by hyperlinks, and taking on Google with Wikia, his for-profit offshoot?

Oh, right — because he's not doing any of his jobs well. Sue Gardner, the executive director of Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, has made it clear she's running the show there. And Wikia? Its search engine, the project on which Wales has said he's focusing his energies, has 0.000079 percent of the market.

The common thread: Wales is incapable of sustained attention on anything, or anyone. He once signaled his coupledom by tweeting thanks to an admirer from "Andrea and I." Weckerle has left a coded retort for Wales with this quote from Roy Disney: "It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are."

Not as rough a farewell as Rachel Marsden, the conservative Canadian pundit. She auctioned Wales's clothes on eBay after he posted a note on Wikipedia stating that they were no longer an item. Too much trouble, too much effort, for Wales to repeat that kind of drama with Weckerle, we guess.

Breaking up on Twitter? Far more suited to Jimmy's attention span. The only question: When are Wales's backers at Wikia — Bessemer Venture Partners and Amazon.com among them — going to lose interest in him, too?

New York Times hooker tweets explained, but bad writing a mystery

Owen Thomas — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:00:00 PDT

At last, Timesman Matt Richtel has explained why he's posing as a female hooker on his personal Twitter account: He's writing a novel, 140 characters at a time. No, no, wait for it — he's invented a new genre of fiction which he's calling the "Twiller." How were people who don't read Editor & Publisher supposed to figure that out? Richtel, belatedly, has grasped the problem: He's just broken voice on Twitter to announce the addition of a plot summary to his blog. Richtel coauthors the clever comic strip Rudy Park under the name Theron Heir, so you'd think his new project has a chance. But his online tale fails. I asked Valleywag writer Paul Boutin, who moonlights as a Wall Street Journal book reviewer, to explain why:

Richtel's short posts are riddled with typos in an attempt at authenticity. But he hasn't given any of his characters an engaging voice — I can't tell them apart. There's clearly a puzzle to be solved, but a puzzle is not a novel. Unlike, say, the diary entries in Jack Womack's Random Acts of Senseless Violence, these posts don't add up to reveal the complex mind of a dynamic character created by the author. Instead, they mimic the what-the-huh intractability of most Twitter streams.

Even Boing Boing editor Xeni Jardin was perplexed by Richtel, wondering if he wasn't indulging in an ARG, or alternate-reality game.

The exercise seems much more fun for Richtel than for readers. He can zazz up his stuffy NYT image by boasting, "I'm writing a novel on Twitter." But had someone else announced a similar experiment first, would Richtel, who covers both digital culture and Internet prostitution for the Times, actually consider it newsworthy?

When the 250 only date the 250

Owen Thomas — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:00:00 PDT

When we popularized "the 250" as a nickname for San Francisco's Internet cool-kids crowd, we didn't realize how literal the incest was. Take the flirtation between Flickr's engineering chief, Cal Henderson, and Ariel Waldman, the community manager of Pownce, an online file-sharing service. Pownce was cofounded by Leah Culver, Henderson's ex-girlfriend, who has also dated around the scene. Henderson and Waldman traveled to Hawaii together, and have made jokes — on Twitter and Flickr, of course — about Henderson wishing Waldman shared his last name and calling her his "fake wife." It's all so darling, veering on disturbing.

Social networks — the kind Henderson and Waldman work on when they're not using them to flirt — are supposed to expand our worlds. Yet these websites' real effect is to shrink them. Who'd want to start anything with anyone who's not already registered on all the same websites you use? The training time to explain the twee etiquette of Web 2.0 is a barrier to entry more fearsome than any Google or Microsoft might dream up. It can only lead to San Francisco's insider scene becoming literally inbred.

(Photo by bees))

Once again, Vanity Fair leaves geeks at the kids' power table

Owen Thomas — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:00:00 PDT

Preeminent among the magazine world's kingmaking power lists is Vanity Fair's New Establishment, which appears in the October issue — on newsstands in L.A. and New York today, but not in the Bay Area for another six days. Silicon Valley gets similar short shrift: The names who make it there are predictable bigs like Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, or Hollywood-crossover types like Jeff Skoll, eBay's first employee turned movie producer. Walt Mossberg, now employed by New Establishment perennial Rupert Murdoch, also squeaked in. The consolation prize Vanity Fair offers: Its "Next Establishment" list, reserved for the likes of Twitter's Ev Williams. It's a marvelous piece of New York media trickery — flatter the geeks by making them feel included, but corral them into a side room so the real power brokers aren't offended by comparison. True, the "Next Establishment" suggests that these are people who might matter in the future. But in saying that, Vanity Fair's editors are also sending the message that right here, right now, its "Next" nominees are nobodies. On this year's list:

Wendi Deng Murdoch, MySpace China

Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, MySpace

Max Levchin, Slide

Robin Li, Baidu

Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos

Elon Musk, SpaceX

Ali and Hadi Partovi, iLike

Mika Salmi, MTV

Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh

Quincy Smith, CBS

Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times

Peter Thiel, Clarium Capital

Evan Williams, Twitter

Andrew Zolli, PopTech

Twittad lets you sell Twitter pages no one looks at

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:20:00 PDT

There is now an online ad network for Twitter backgrounds. Launched last week, ad startup Twittad allows Twitter users to sell their background image as ad space and charge advertisers based on how many followers they have. Back in June, Ian Schafer, the CEO of interactive agency Deep Focus, sold his Twitter background as advertising space for $1,082.01. Ridiculous, we thought — since the background only appears when Twitter users visit the company's website to look at another user's profile, or read a specific message on the website. Twitter's website accounts for about 5 percent of the service's usage, and users mostly read pages with streams of all their friends' messages, on which individual backgrounds don't appear.

Never mind that! When Schafer sold his Twitter background, Commenter Gregnog told us to quiet down and "just nod, smile and take the check." Well, Gregnog, wherever you are, now's your chance. Using Twittad, Rishi Lakhani, who has 305 Twitter followers, just sold the rights to choose his background image for the next 7 days for $30.00. Even if all 305 of those followers visited Rishil's page over the next seven days — and trust us, they won't — that's a fantastically high, unlikely to be repeated $100 CPM, or cost per thousand impressions. Most social networks are lucky to get a single-digit CPM.

Google Chrome already known worldwide in July

Owen Thomas — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:20:00 PDT

Forget the klutzy announcement-by-comic-book of Google Chrome, Google's new Web browser — this thing was the worst-kept secret in the Valley and beyond. Joshua Schachter notes that Alberto Lumbreras, an R&D engineer at Telefonica, Twittered about Google Chrome in July — but no one noticed because he called it a "navegador" instead of a "browser." The news made it to China late last month. And the head of PR for Google's Android project spilled the beans over tapas last Friday. That, too, made it to Twitter.

Twintro reads Twitter so you don't have to

Melissa Gira Grant — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:00:00 PDT

Launching today is Twintro, which "helps you discover the most interesting Twitter users" by reposting one lucky Twitterer's updates each day. It's sure to be a hit among "thought leaders," said News.com, as the service could make it easier to see who's making the most "fascinating, amusing, and thought-provoking" updates on monetizing webinars or whatnot. Fabulous — they get their Tweet-ego stroked with a rebroadcast to precisely the audience who might sort of care. The site popped its cherry with Nick Douglas, an early Twitter adopter (and Valleywag's first editor). (Photo by Daisy's Little Cottage)

Mark Zuckerberg pokes Ev Williams by copying Twitter

Owen Thomas — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:00:00 PDT

Imitation is the soul of flattery, and the engine of Silicon Valley. Whatever can be copied, will be — especially when the copiers are pals. After a redesign, Facebook has made its status-update feature more prominent. It now asks users, "What are you doing right now? A sharp-eyed reader notes that those words are eerily similar to Twitter's "What are you doing?" We wonder if this will pose any problems for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's newfound friendship with Twitter founder Ev Williams.

It shouldn't. Copycat wording aside, no one actually uses Twitter to tell their friends what they're doing. If Twitter updated its site to match user behavior, the question would be: "What are you complaining about? What aspect of your business do you wish to promote? Which URL do you wish to send? What jejune utterance do you wish to share with people who aren't actually your friends?"

New York Times reporter poses as hooker on Twitter

Melissa Gira Grant — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:40:00 PDT

Matt Richtel, the New York Times reporter and author of Hooked, has whored himself out on Twitter this week. The messages read as if they're written both by a hooker and the murderous john she meets, somewhere on the road to Denver for the Democratic National Convention. Tweeting in drag as a prostitute. Is it an old-fashioned Internet man stunt? Part of Richtel's recent day-job obsession with covering the Internet sex industry? Or is it some kind of experiment for his moonlight career as a novelist? Whatever Richtel's motive, the result is deeply creepy. His most whorish updates follow:

Oh good God, she's tweeting her childbirth

Paul Boutin — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:20:00 PDT

Ginny-Marie Case wins the prize. While others thumb-type the same old same from the DNC in Denver, she's Twittering her way through labor. "At 4 cm. Epidural is in. Doing well." Tweeting your ob/gyn exam during an earthquake is now officially lame. Ginny, when they hand you your lovely newborn? Put down the phone.

Reporters on reporters reporting with Twitter, the 140-character version

Melissa Gira Grant — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:00:00 PDT

When there's no new story about Twitter and all of its users — this week anyway — what's left to say? Reporters, they Twitter just like us! Today's Washington Post rounds up journalists covering the Democratic National Convention with Twitter, like former Wonkette editor and Time.com blogger Ana Marie Cox and the Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar. (Who found her new boyfriend through Twitter, whee!) We boiled down the whole thing into only what's fit to Twitter itself.