I LOL’d. This post is as good a place as any to note that the media response to Chat Roulette echos the response to Twitter around this time last year. Basically, they had been so burned by ignoring Myspace, and took too long to understand Facebook, they weren’t going to get fooled by Twitter and so they jumped in both feet first. Chat Roulette went from internet sensation to all over the media in record time. I imagine that the next platform to take off will get covered in the traditional media BEFORE it becomes popular online, thus creating an interesting paradox.

As of this writing, I still don’t have Google Buzz on my computer – these thoughts were gleaned from find it enabled on my iPhone. First reaction: Holy crap, I love it.

This app wouldn’t have worked 3 years ago, but Facebook and Twitter have been doing heavy lifting, training “Social Media Experts” and technophobes alike how to (over)share. Broadly generalizing here, but a lot of people probably find their Facebook accounts bloated with too many people they don’t care enough about. By limiting Google Buzz to the users you communicate most with, Google has made the hard cuts for you.

I wonder if people will share differently than they do on FB or Twitter. What do you think?

Microsoft probably invested millions of dollars and several months to come up with a word they could turn into a verb like ‘To Google’, but Buzz feels natural right off the bat. For what it’s worth, I like ‘to Buzz’ infinitely more than I like ‘to Tweet’.

Since I only saw it on my iPhone, this may change, but it’s potential as a mobile app is amazing.

Privacy issues aside, the Buzz Map and the “Nearby” feature of the mobile app are incredibly voyeuristic and addictive. With links to a users Google Profile, it also makes the web a lot more local and personal.

What will Facebook’s undoubtedly ham-handed response be? Another move that outrages privacy experts, looks bad, and is hard to use?

When Google exposes my data, somehow I expect it, maybe I’m an apologist. When Facebook does it, people get MAD MAD MAD.

I think Twitter remains relatively useful, but this hurts Facebook a lot.

Also, whither Foursquare?

What do you think?

Via Kenny, Jorge Arangure’s amazing Twitter update:

Hey I’m sure when Peyton Manning was growing up he always wanted to throw the TD pass that gave the Saints a Super Bowl win. Now he has.

Which lead to the return of the Manning Face. Not seen in these parts for several years.

The article’s not online anymore, but Fimoculous captured the quotation that Google and Microsoft are paying a $0.03 CPM for Tweets. That’s more than I would have paid…

Rhode Island’s Knowledge Retention Summit made an interesting decision when they chose a Twitter hashtag.

Via Fimoculous, this is the best thing I’ve seen in a month. Love.

It will be a big video this week.

Or full quote from this Mediaite.com interview with Bill Simmons: “Facebook is a social network; Twitter is a media/marketing vehicle disguised as a social network.” It’s interesting to see how hard Bill Simmons has fallen for Twitter because a couple months ago he was bashing it. In general, I think his take on media/journalism is too simplified, but this quote about Twitter is right on.

4 different people mentioned to me today that I ended up in their Google Reader at some point and they wanted to know why. I had noticed that certain articles I was scanning were “liked” by people I didn’t know, which I thought was weird. Obviously, Google made a change. To me it looks like a strike against both Facebook AND Twitter. Not only are you able to connect with and read the articles shared by people you do know (Facebook), but you’ll be able to do the same with people you don’t know, as well (Twitter). Seems like a good idea to me.

Oh, and you’re damn right I’m gonna “share” this, Captain Obvious, you better “like” it.

Just saw this forwarded from a friend. I agree with what Biz is saying. Following 50K, 25K or even 1K followers makes it difficult or impossible to follow your stream in any meaningful way and if everyone has 50K followers, no one listens to anyone at all. If that happens, Twitter becomes a hollow network of people yelling into a room, in which everyone else is also yelling. Imagine standing on the pitcher’s mound of a sold-out baseball stadium. Then imagine trying to have a meaningful conversation with anyone sitting in the stadium’s seats. That’s the direction Twitter is heading in, though this might be a step towards trying to head that off.

Hi There,

I’m contacting you because you have a Twitter account for which
we enabled something called “autofollow.” This is not a public
feature, it’s something we did for a limited set of accounts
such that they automatically follow any account that follows
them.

We’re going to discontinue autofollow because this behavior
sends the wrong message. Namely, it is unlikely that anyone can
actually read tweets from thousands of accounts which makes
this activity disingenuous.

However, we understand that there may be exceptions such as
applications built using our API or the ability to exchange
direct messages. There are also some who think it’s simply
polite to follow back other accounts.

While we’re going to stop supporting autofollow, we’d like to
find a way to support the other goals folks are really trying
to accomplish. Please feel free to reply to this email and let
us know how we can do this better together.

Thanks,
Biz Stone, Co-founder
Twitter, Inc.

A couple weeks ago I pulled a quotation out of a NY Magazine article about how “the publicity Twitter has generated [is] mostly from nervous journalists striving to stay relevant in a free-information age.” This idea has now gotten The Daily Show treatment with Samantha Bee saying the media has gone bonkers for Twitter “because we’re rotting corpses grabbing for any glimmer of relevance.”

Essentially, the media ignored blogs, scoffed at MySpace, and jumped on Facebook too late. They WON’T make the same mistake again. Twitter is their binky and they’re going to ride it to relevance glory 140 characters at a time. By the way, you can follow UnlikelyWords on Twitter, natch.

(Via Fimoculous)