What he actually said, in a debate with Mark Andreessen at the Milken Institute Global Conference, according to CNN, was that "Twitter's roughly 1,000 employees will have jobs a decade from now," because "the business case for Twitter is solid," while employees of the New York Times "should be worried about the longevity of their jobs" because the newspaper "is not guaranteed a future in the digital age."

Please. No one is guaranteed a future in the digital age. But if I had to pick one paper that had the best chance of surviving and thriving, I'd probably choose the New York Times, a newspaper that continues to provide indispensable, in-depth reporting on topics of great social importance. And if I had to pick one social media network that was most likely to survive, I'd pick ... well, who the hell knows? Social media networks, so far, have the lifespan of butterflies. They look nice for a few minutes, and then they're gone. Poof! Friendster, MySpace, et cetera.

Continue Reading...

[embedtweet id="328648080301903872"]

The first chapter begins in "Amsterdam."

[embedtweet id="328648452579930115"]

It's a crime mystery told in the second-person:

There are pictures:

[embedtweet id="328649328967155714"]

Read chapters one through seven here.

Continue Reading...

I started writing my review of Twitter Music while listening to a George Jones country song I'd never heard before: "The King Is Gone (and so are you.)" I listened to a lot of George Jones on the day I learned he died. It seemed appropriate, if a bit macabre, to follow him on Twitter Music and see what sort of songs might pop up as a result.

I'm not going to list "The King Is Gone" in my top ten George Jones pantheon (frankly, any chorus with the words "yabba dabba doo" is right out) but I'm glad I heard it. I love being exposed to new music (even if, and sometimes especially if, it's old music).

Twitter Music is all about the social discovery of new music. It suggests for your listening pleasure songs that are already popular on Twitter, songs that the people you follow are tweeting about and listening to, and songs from artists who are in mysterious ways connected to the musicians that you choose to follow. It's confusing in a good, serendipitous, jumbled up kind of way. You're never quite sure how exactly the algorithm works that is generating the tunes, but that's OK. The whole point is discovery, hearing something new that you might like, generated through a fortuitous crunching of your social relationships. If you have a Spotify or Rdio premium account you can listen to the entirety of the songs; if you have iTunes you get a 30-second clip and the option to buy.

Continue Reading...

That said, occasionally the right person starts the right Twitter parody account at the right time, and the commentary can take on a life of its own. The result: an account that can retain followers long after the prompting event or person has disappeared from headlines.

Here are 6 accounts based on memes well past their Internet prime that still making it work:

1. The Bronx Zoo's Cobra, which caused a panic when it disappeared from the Zoo in 2011, soon resurfaced on Twitter, gaining thousands of followers overnight. Although it was soon recovered in real life, the parody account still updates frequently and retains almost 200K followers:

[embedtweet id="318797186991288320"]

[embedtweet id="315230065459863552"]

Continue Reading...

The former U.S. president has joined Twitter, though opted not to adopt the handle Colbert picked out for him two weeks ago. Colbert registered @PrezBillyJeff for Clinton and sent a tweet Clinton dictated to him.

That handle was a little too informal for Clinton, it seems, who eventually switched the handle to plain ol' @BillClinton and started tweeting Wednesday.

The account was quickly verified, and Clinton already has more than 288,000 followers. In his first few tweets, Clinton told Colbert he was ready to start his "Twitter lessons."

Colbert seemed pleased that Clinton decided to take the plunge, though appeared dismayed that the former president failed to turn up to his Game of Thrones party.

Continue Reading...

Seems his fellow Republicans did not appreciate what Kush said on Twitter and Facebook regarding a 19-year-old female at the meeting, "Nice hat Working America chick but damn you are a radical bitch." Nor did it enjoy his remarks depicting the organization's state director Chelsey Evans as "Uh oh another Working America chick," or his observation that she had "nice boots…I know she makes more than min wage." And they definitely didn't find it too amusing when he declared that she "was hot enough to almost make me register democrat."

He's currently suspended, indefinitely, without pay.

"It was an ill-fated attempt at humor," Kush told Watchdog.org Wednesday. "Do I regret it? Yes … I absolutely crossed the line."

Continue Reading...

No sooner did hackers send a false Associated Press tweet reporting explosions at the White House on Tuesday than investors started dumping stocks - eventually unloading $134 billion worth. Turns out, some investors are not only gullible, they're impossibly fast stock traders.

Except most of the investors weren't human. They were computers, selling on autopilot beyond the control of humans, like a scene from a sci-fi horror film.

"Before you could blink, it was over," said Joe Saluzzi, co-founder of Themis Trading and an outspoken critic of high-speed computerized trading. "With people, you wouldn't have this type of reaction."

For decades, computers have been sorting through data and news to help investment funds decide whether to buy or sell. But that's old school. Now "algorithmic" trading programs sift through data, news, even tweets, and execute trades by themselves in fractions of a second, without slowpoke humans getting in the way. More than half of stock trading every day is done this way.

Continue Reading...

Now The Telegraph is weighing in, explaining:

A statement in Arabic-language newspaper Elaph, translated by The Telegraph, added, "A festival official said the three Emiratis were taken out on the grounds they are too handsome and that the Commission [for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices] members feared female visitors could fall for them.

Continue Reading...

Britney Spears, in 2007 and early 2008, was notable not merely for a particular sort of aimless wandering through Los Angeles but for an alternately hostile and coddling relationship with the press. She'd alternately romance a paparazzo and scream at the cameras who followed her around. An Allure magazine cover from the period, for which Spears consented to be photographed but not interviewed, said it all: "Britney Spears Tells Us Nothing -- and Everything."

Spears and the paparazzi, as documented in Rolling Stone and the Atlantic, had a symbiotic relationship. She rejected and sought their attention, all at once, on days-long, caffeinated drives to nowhere. But by now, with a return to apparent health and two albums and a season of TV under her belt, Spears is no longer the object of prurient interest she'd once been.

Continue Reading...

Although a source told Politico that CNN is only having talks with the Obama adviser and former speaker of the House, Twitter ran with the rumor:

[embedtweet id="326795862279856128"]

[embedtweet id="326796770199883776"]

[embedtweet id="326799282776731651"]

[embedtweet id="326795631685419010"]

[embedtweet id="326794451043373056"]

[embedtweet id="326800593618358273"]

[embedtweet id="326800016192708608"]

Continue Reading...

The tweet said that there had been two explosions at the White House and President Barack Obama was injured. The attack on AP's Twitter account and AP Mobile Twitter account was preceded by a phishing attempt on AP's corporate network.

The AP confirmed that its Twitter account had been suspended following a hack and said it was working to correct the issue.

The tweet put out by hackers briefly sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average sharply lower.

Continue Reading...

But the markets were still rattled momentarily by the tweet, being blamed on phishers gaining access to the AP Twitter password.

As soon it was clearly a hoax, Twitter lit up with jokes. Here are some of our favorites:

[embedtweet id="326745306203037696"]

[embedtweet id="326746637630312450"]

[embedtweet id="326748049290436608"]

[embedtweet id="326745880139018240"]

[embedtweet id="326747596792143872"]

[embedtweet id="326752120667774976"]

[embedtweet id="326746549482844161"]

[embedtweet id="326748612841308160"]

[embedtweet id="326747250657202176"]

Continue Reading...

[embedtweet id="325248411626528769"]

[embedtweet id="325196470716334080"]

[embedtweet id="325255079215132673"]

[embedtweet id="325221585126572033"]

[embedtweet id="325246883356344320"]

[embedtweet id="325256946879967234"]

[embedtweet id="325262836429377539"]

[embedtweet id="325348075197583361"]

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones also weighed in, as Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald reported, saying that  “These guys kind of look like Israelis. I’m not saying Israel is involved in it, we don’t have any evidence of that. It’s just that they kind of look Israeli."

And then of course there was the misidentification made by Reddit and other "Internet detectives," as Salon's Alex Pareene put it, who "made one last totally shameful false accusation that also in this case involved the harassment of a family currently desperately searching for their lost son and brother."

Continue Reading...

Next to nothing, aside from supposition and close-reading of Tweets, is known as yet about the possible motivations of the suspected bombers.

Continue Reading...

Twitter said in a blog post that an app will be available for download from Apple's online store Thursday. A Web version is also expected Thursday. Twitter said the service will eventually be available on Android devices as well.

The service uses information from Twitter chatter to find popular tracks as well as new artists. Users who follow musicians can see what artists those musicians follow and listen to songs by them.

Thursday's announcement about a music service had been expected. "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest tweeted about it last week. It's called (hash)music, following Twitter's practice of using hashtags to organize tweets around topics.

The music service's debut comes less than three months after the release of a Twitter video app called Vine that distributes six-second clips that can be played in a continuous loop.

The expansion into other forms of media besides text and photos is part of Twitter's effort to make its messaging service even more appealing to its more than 200 million monthly users. More frequent usage of the service creates more opportunities to show ads — the main way that Twitter makes money.

Continue Reading...

After officials discovered a video from Lord & Taylor with an image of a suspect, conflicting reports emerged on the status of the case. This afternoon, the AP and CNN misreported that a suspect had been arrested in the Boston explosion case, with CNN even citing the person in custody as a "dark-skinned male" while CBS said Boston police were searching for a white male. NBC and CBS said no arrests had been made and CNN and the AP later backtracked on the arrest claims, saying federal sources deny that a suspect is in custody.

Twitter had a field day:

[embedtweet id="324593875773710336"]

[embedtweet id="324592533168607232"]

Continue Reading...

Jim Hoft, a blogger for the Gateway Pundit, blamed Obama in a post titled: "Worst. President. Ever… Boston Marathon Terrorist Attack Cements Obama Legacy as Complete Failure."

Patrick Dollard, a contributor to Breitbart News, tweeted:

[embedtweet id="323885372507566081"]

Sean Hannity cut news footage of the attacks into a montage set to music - music that Deadspin observes sounds very similar to "Doctor Who" theme song, "I Am The Doctor." Video of Hannity's segment is here.

And amidst the misinformation flying around throughout yesterday, the New York Post did not help with this tweet, which misreported the number of deaths in the attack.

[embedtweet id="323886836386762752"]

Officials said Tuesday that three have died so far.

Continue Reading...

In a piece called "I refuse to be a grown-up," the "Prozac Nation" author explains how she manages to look so young at age 45 (no marriages, no kids, nightly applications of Retin-A) and how her many habits (speaking her mind, not speaking her mind, drinking red wine, not drinking white wine) separate her from her 40-something peers.

The essay took off, and reactions generally fell into one of two camps: Team "Leave Elizabeth Alone" believes that hers is no greater a sin of navel-gazing than those committed by other animal, vegetable and mineral. The second group feels that Wurtzel is very, very annoying and would like her to stop writing these kinds of essays.

A roundup.

For the defense:

[embedtweet id="322743536791457792"]

[embedtweet id="322478088166449154"]

[embedtweet id="322467503685115904"]

[embedtweet id="322423350985109504"]

For the prosecution:

[embedtweet id="322463283762323456"]

[embedtweet id="322701214980644864"]

[embedtweet id="322471528333717505"]

[embedtweet id="322704968744321025"]

Continue Reading...

On Tuesday, the congressman raised eyebrows with the following tweet, calling the singer "hot." He wrote: "great night,couldn't believe how hot u were.see you again next Tuesday.try a little tenderness." The tweet was up for only 21 minutes until Cohen deleted it, but it has been saved forever in all its glory thanks to site Politiwoops.

The Washington Post reports, however, that Cohen will hold a press conference at 1 pm ET to discuss the tweet, which may have been taken out of context. Cohen, a long-time supporter of the Memphis art scene, may have been referring to her performance at the White House's Memphis Soul night concert on Tuesday, and not her physical appearance.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...