Twitter

Twitter to scrap controversial list

JULIA ZAPPEI, Associated Press — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:01:00 PST

Social-media site Twitter plans to scrap its hand-picked list of "suggested users" to follow after controversy erupted over the selection of people on the list, a company executive said Monday.

Crowdsourcing "Coraline"

Laura Miller — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:23:00 PDT

Last week, BBC Audiobooks America announced that it would sponsor the creation of a story via Twitter feed, using a first sentence written by author Neil Gaiman as the seed and inviting the public to collaborate in completing it, one 140-character passage at a time. The experiment was widely pronounced "cool," as such things usually are, then promptly forgotten by everyone but the participants -- again, as such things usually are.

Pepsi's entry for stupidest tweet ever

Andrew Leonard — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:28:00 PDT

So Pepsi creates a sophomoric iPhone app, ostensibly to help guys pick up chicks, but really just as marketing for its Amp energy drink, and women get upset, because it is sexist and insulting. Sample proposed pickup line to get the "artist" gal to swoon into your arms: "You know the Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. I wonder what else she shaves."

"In social media, women rule"

Judy Berman — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:08:00 PDT

New data on the way Internet use breaks down by gender seems to confirm some long-held stereotypes. Marisa Taylor at the Wall Street Journal reports that women outnumber men 57 percent to 43 percent on Facebook and Twitter. We also make up nearly two-thirds of MySpace users. Brian Solis, who crunched the numbers, summarizes his findings in no uncertain terms: "The point of interest that's worth review and discussion is that in social media, women rule."

Adventures in branding: StockTwits

Andrew Leonard — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:03:00 PDT

Satire is dead. The Financial Times reports today that Twitter is is resurrecting in cyberspace the teeming trading pits of yesteryear."

How Facebook and Twitter warp your brain

Andrew Leonard — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:18:00 PDT

Dr Tracy Alloway of Scotland's University of Stirling has a theory, pithily summarized by Australia's news.com.au: "Facebook makes you sharper but Twitter makes you thicker."

Hu Jintao is no Kaiser Wilhelm

Andrew Leonard — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:19:00 PDT

For an academic historian, Niall Ferguson throws more than his share of bombs in the popular press. Just a couple of weeks ago he compared President Barack Obama to Felix the Cat -- both were/are black and "very, very lucky." Two years ago, he labeled birth control and abortion "vices" that were preventing a Malthusian human overpopulation disaster. More recently, he has been chattering about an upcoming "divorce" between China and the United States -- or "Chimerica," as he likes to call it -- and warning of dire consequences.

SheWrites.com: A salon of one's own

Frieda Klotz — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 09:29:00 PDT

Last month, when Kamy Wicoff launched the beta version of a networking site called SheWrites.com, she knew it was a good idea, but she may not have guessed quite how good. She Writes is an online community of female writers that works like Facebook: Anyone can join, and members can create groups, post work, and advertise readings and workshops. The forum features memoirists, biographers, erotica writers, bloggers and journalists, and it counts feminists like Elaine Showalter among its number. Within days of its launch, She Writes had several hundred members. Within a week it had a thousand.

Who needs newspapers when you have Twitter?

Frank Hornig — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:29:00 PDT

Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of technology and culture magazine Wired, may be a part of the press but that doesn't mean he depends on newspapers for his news. In this revealing interview, Anderson talks about the Internet's challenge to the traditional press, why free is best when it comes to business models on the Web and why he would rather read Twitter than a daily newspaper.

Hey, authors, don't tweet in anger!

Mary Elizabeth Williams — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:24:00 PDT

As newspapers and magazines shrink and shutter their book review sections, one could easily fret that with them will go that other great literary institution: the author-critic feud.

Iran? The U.S. should mind its own business

Jeanne Carstensen — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:24:00 PDT

"A friend once told me that I was the only person he knew who was both 100 percent American and 100 percent Iranian," writes Hooman Majd in his book on Iranian culture, "The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran."

Tiananmen's bloody lessons for Tehran

Andrew Leonard — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:20:00 PDT

In the spring of 1989, the fax machine was China's Twitter -- the miracle technology connecting Chinese democracy activists with each other and the outside world. In Berkeley, Calif., the apartment of one Chinese expat student who owned a fax became a 24/7 information clearinghouse. Documents produced by students camping out on the square would emerge magically from the machine in all their subversive glory.

Hoekstra compares GOP to Iran protesters

Alex Koppelman — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:35:00 PDT

With the protests in Iran, we've finally seen that Twitter can actually be a useful tool. But at the same time, there are plenty of pitfalls to the site. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., demonstrated one of them on Wednesday, writing:

The minister of Twitter

Andrew Leonard — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:15:00 PDT

Shashi Tharoor, recently appointed India's minister of external state affairs, is, according to his Wikipedia page, "a prolific author, columnist, journalist, human-rights advocate, humanitarian and adviser or fellow of various institutions."

Twitter's moment of Chinese truth

Andrew Leonard — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:25:00 PDT

How do we know when a new communications medium truly comes of age?

Join the shame parade

Carina Chocano — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:28:00 PDT

If there remained any doubt as to the magical moneymaking properties of humiliating self-exposure, it evaporated Monday night as almost 10 million viewers tuned in to watch the wheels come off the bus of TV's most lovable octo-family, the Gosselins. The new season of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" attracted twice the viewers of last season's finale, more than any other show on TV on Memorial Day, and it's probably safe to say it wasn't the promise of birthday party fun that drew them. For weeks, star Kate Gosselin had been trolling for sympathy in the pages of People magazine and Us Weekly as soon as it came to light that her husband had not only been unfaithful, but creepily unfaithful. The shame parade paid off, if not in her marriage then in her ancillary career: TLC has booked them for 40 more episodes.

Call me Ishmael. The end.

Barry Yourgrau — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:38:00 PDT

The cellphone grows more wondrous and indispensable to us every day. Talking is the least of it. We text and Tweet our heads off, send photos, watch TV shows, play video games. But in Japan, imperium of the future where all the above is old hat, the keitai (cellphone) has further spawned a wildly successful, populist fiction genre. Keitai shosetsu, the so-called cellphone novel, has been touted (in the pages of the New Yorker, among other places) and reviled (by Japanese literati) as the first narrative mode of the txt msg age -- the herald of a written-word future bent by wireless telecom's powers.

I am the champion, my friends

Alex Koppelman — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:45:00 PDT

I have some very big news to share, folks: Last night, I won the trivia contest that Karl Rove holds on Twitter every week. And with my win comes the grand prize, a personalized signed photo of "Bush's Brain" himself.

Why can't we concentrate?

Laura Miller — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:55:00 PDT

Here's a fail-safe topic when making conversation with everyone from cab drivers to grad students to cousins in the construction trade: Mention the fact that you're finding it harder and harder to concentrate lately. The complaint appears to be universal, yet everyone blames it on some personal factor: having a baby, starting a new job, turning 50, having to use a Blackberry for work, getting on Facebook, and so on. Even more pervasive than Betty Friedan's famous "problem that has no name," this creeping distractibility and the technology that presumably causes it has inspired such cris de coeur as Nicholas Carr's much-discussed "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" essay for the Atlantic Monthly and diatribes like "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future," a book published last year by Mark Bauerlein.

Twittering the end of Reagan-Thatcherism

Andrew Leonard — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:09:00 PDT

Of course the G-20 summit meeting has a Twitter feed! Who can deny our desperate hunger for 140-character-long updates from a gathering of the leaders of the twenty most influential nations on the planet? When struggling with a global recession, the breakdown of modern finance, the resurgence of protectionism and the changing balance of power between the developed and the developing world, cryptic one-line telegraphic ejaculations are obviously the best way to convey complexity and nuance.