Twitter was heralded today in Reuters as the future of breaking news and citizen journalism. The mainstream media is finally starting to understand what many of us have been saying for well over a year. As I said last April:

"...but for breaking news, Twitter is proving to be a force."

So much of the focus has been on if Twitter and its mundane life updates can catch on in the mainstream, that people are looking right past some of its true potential, such as breaking news.

And of course saving Americans from Egyptian prisons...

More thoughts:

• Twitter as a Tool for Political Discussion
• Twitter is Dead! Long Live Twitter!
• TwitterQuake in San Fran
  
• Twitter Is In the Eye of the Beholder
• Twitter Once Again Come Through In An Emergency Situation
• Has Twitter Just Twittered the Shark?
• Yep, Facebook Is Gunning For Twitter
• Facebook Goes Live With Their New Look, Dare I Say Twitter Inspired?
• Newsweek Jumping On the Twitter Wagon
• Facebook To Be More Like Twitter
• Twitter My News To Me Fast
  
• Twittering the Night Away: Twitter Is Blowing Up

I kind of like what the term "Bitchmeme" has evolved into. Most of the time it's not quite so serious, it's just a way to explain everyone talking themselves in circles about something rather silly. But there is and always has been something more meaningful behind it: the absurdity of bloggers constantly bitching about other bloggers and the way they do things.

I'm not going to give any examples because that would just turn this post into bitching about other bloggers too, and there really is nothing specific I have in mind here, but I think most of you will know what I mean. There are a lot of examples out there.

I see people left and right complaining about the way one site does things, or who writes what. Then we have those who try to tell others what they should write, and what's worthy of a post or story. It's all nonsense.

In my opinion the sheer act of bitching about what someone else is doing, whether that be in a post or in a comment or via Twitter or FriendFeed, etc, is far worse than whatever the supposed infraction was. The bitching party also has to realize that while they may not find whatever it is they are bitching about of use, someone else might.

And really, even if no one else in the world does, who cares? Why bitch?

I think of the scene in Fight Club where Brad Pitt is arguing with Ed Norton in a diner trying to explain that his material life is stupid. Then Pitt just stops and says "Do what you like, man."

Everyone should do what they like. Who is anyone to try and dictate what someone else does? If you don't like the way an author writes or the way a site runs things, don't read it. No one is forcing you to. If you think Techmeme is an echo chamber (the subject of the initial Bitchmeme post), don't read it. No one is forcing you to.

These posts and comments that offer nothing but to bitch and attempt to instill their beliefs - they're tiresome. They do little but distract from any kind of real conversation about an actual topic. Instead people get all worked up about what that person is saying and a Bitchmeme is born.

I really don't want to see Bitchmeme evolve into a full-fledged Bitchosphere.

Iron Man was a solid movie. It has already made a ton of money, and deservedly so - it was very good. BUT, the new trailer for The Dark Knight, just looks great.

I really liked the first two Spider-Man films, liked the first two X-Men films even more, but for my money, Batman Begins has to be the best comic-book adaptation to date. Kind of like how Casino Royale was a great movie and not just a great James Bond movie, Batman Begins was just a great movie, period.

The Dark Knight looks like it could be even better.



Fear not though Iron Man fans, with a $100.7 million opening (the 2nd best ever for a non-sequel), you can be sure the 2nd and 3rd films have already been greenlit. And yes, all the main people are signed up for two more already.

Dear Gmail,

Will you please add an easy-to-use multiple Gmail account manager? Perhaps we're not supposed to have multiple Gmail accounts (at least, probably not as many as I do), but come on, you know we're all doing it. I have my original one, one for my site, one for my other site, one for yet another site, one for work, one for spam, etc...

It is quite simply a pain in the ass to switch between them since you have to sign out, remember the name and password, then sign back in. Way too many clicks and too much typing for what should be a simple thing.

Okay, here's the real issue. So right now I basically use one Gmail and forward all others to it. I use the 'Accounts' tab in the Settings to make it so I can send from the different accounts without signing out, etc. That's all great. However, with devices such as the iPhone, if I want to send from different accounts, I have to set each one up on the iPhone - this basically gives me two copies of every email I am getting. And the iPhone does not have a 'Mark all as read' button - very annoying, and time consuming.

It's not just that either. Just in general I would like it on the web version of Gmail if I didn't have to forward all my mail to one account. It has just becomes too much of an organizational nightmare. Maybe some will disagree, but I would prefer to have them separate but all under one roof. This way, all accounts' emails would still be searchable via the one search box, and it would be easy enough to switch between them, but they would still all exist as their own separate mailboxes. This would make it a lot easier for me to sort through things.

I know exactly what I want. Just something, maybe under the 'Contacts' link that will allow me to switch between the different accounts with one click. Hell, it can even be a drop-down menu if you think that will work best (though that would be two clicks).

Obviously all my passwords would have to be saved to do this, but how about when you group Gmail accounts together, you can then set a master password for all of them?

Yes, I know there are scripts and plugins that will do this, but unfortunately I don't use Firefox regularly. And yes, I know programs like 1Password do this fairly well, but I want to be able to do it easily when I'm not on my home computer and even that involved too many clicks for my taste.

Come on Gmail. Help me get organized. I promise a nice post or 12 in return.

Thanks.

Last night was VentureBeat's DigitalMedia party at The Ambassador bar in San Francisco. Great time, completely packed house. All Things Digital's Kara Swisher put together a funny video of the event (below) and wrote it up.



Matt Marshall thanks everyone here.

Here's a picture of the full VentureBeat team from the event.



Brian Solis took some more great shots here.

[photo: (CC) Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com, bub.blicio.us.]

Who says old school media companies still just don't get it? I do.

Mike Arrington of TechCrunch had arranged to rent out a theater in San Francisco tomorrow night to show Marvel's new film Iron Man to 600 of his readers. He paid for every seat in the theater and then put up a post directing readers how to sign up (paying $1 to make sure people would actually legitimately want them). It went smoothly, me and several people I know were supposed to go.

A few hours later, TechCrunch gets a cease & desist letter from Marvel stating the showing was unauthorized -- even though Arrington had called the group sales lines on the website to set the whole thing up. He was told to take down the post immediately and contact the lawyer who sent the very terse letter.

Now, I don't know all the legal angles at play here, but I assume Arrington does, he is a lawyer after all. But just from a pure PR perspective, this has to be one of the dumbest moves in recent memory on the Internet for a mega movie's opening weekend. They were basically getting 600 fanboys to come see their movie, and thousands more buzzing about the event if they couldn't make it. These folks, myself included, probably would have provided plenty of free PR whether it be via blog post, IM, Twitter, etc.

So now I'm thinking either a) the movie sucks or b) Marvel is very stupid or c) both.

I had been very excited for Iron Man too.

Bitchmeme on.


UPDATE 4/30: The show will go on! Marvel blames Oracle who apparently has an event at the theater at the same time and thought the TechCrunch readers (The Sharks) would break into a melee with the Oracle invitees (The Jets). Sure.

I'd like to think that being near the top of Techmeme most of the night as well as consistent coverage on Twitter and FriendFeed helped the cause. That, or Arrington's $2,000 in legal fees...

So it's been a while since I posted up some of my links from VentureBeat - sorry, I've literally been home 8 total days in the past month, but that is just about over. Here are some from the past month or so:

• Yang to Ballmer: Stop lying and don’t be cheap.
• Crazy talk: Sony thinks Blu-ray share can soar to 50% this year
• Place world news in context with new Google Earth layer
• Google App Engine readies for brawl with Amazon
• Guitarati aims to make mood music into a business
• Blu-ray steps up integration with other hot tech
• Wal-Mart wises up, ditches Windows-based DRM
• Yahoo launches Flickr Video, puppet tells Arrington
• Google opens access to your Apple remote
• 3G iPhone could be faster than we thought
• Nintendo slowly making the Wii an entertainment hub?
• Last gasp? Yahoo and Google talking search ad deal
• Yahoo is the town bicycle — everyone wants a ride
• Racetrack memory: Half a million songs on your iPod and a battery that’ll last for weeks
• ‘Windows’ of opportunity closing. Gartner thinks Microsoft OS is collapsing
• Blockbuster wants Circuit City: Sinking boat wants more water
• Amid “reinvention”, AOL snaps up Sphere
• Ads in Twitter streams? What’s next, ads on boxer’s backs?
• VoIP on the iPhone: Not yet legal, but here

Previous: MG on VB: Volume 1

My fellow Twitterites, our long international nightmare is over. Well, not really. But we did get Twitter to at least acknowledge the problems they are having in a meaningful way - both on their blog and in a little yellow box on the site as I suggested a few hours ago. They're even now posting updates to the story on the blog and provide links in both places to the GetSatisfaction forum.

Had Twitter just done this a few days ago, the issue may have not gotten so big. Sure, people still would have bitched up a storm - but I probably would have written only 1 post instead of now 3. I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but this makes me wonder if Twitter just didn't hope that no one would notice there was an issue. Of course when their API is sending out data and sites like FriendFeed are pulling it in correctly, it would have been fairly obvious to everyone after a few days - as it has been.

Speaking of conspiracies, what is up with this? Ian Lamont of The Industry Standard tried to login to his account earlier and kept getting prompted to download a parislemon.json file. A commenter of his had the same issue as well. Is Twitter after me? Are they sending my JSON data file to unsuspecting users in an attempt to silence me?

I cannot be silenced! At least not until Twitter is fixed and I'm too busy using it rather than writing posts bitching about Twitter.

Quite a few of you saw my post from last night about Twitter's failure. Quite a few of you have noticed that it's still going on. We're about to enter day 3 of Twitter FAIL and still aren't getting a whole lot from Twitter about it.

Yes, Twitter did in fact acknowledge the issue yesterday in the GetSatisfaction forum. But one problem with this is that most Twitter users have no idea there is a GetSatisfaction forum. Would it not be a good idea post about that on the Twitter blog - if not post about the problem itself? Or even better, how about one of those little yellow boxes you now love to use on the main site to alert us to the issue?

And yes, Twitter does have a twitter_status account to update on downtime. The problem? Neither this nor the GetSatisfaction info have been updated for over a day. (Also, is anyone even seeing the twitter_status updates in their stream?...)

The real problem here is that it's not clear there is any problem. It's not like the site is down. It's just not working correctly. You shouldn't just leave a broken site up with no explanation that it's broken.

As The Last Podcast says, talk to us when things go bad. This is a communications breakdown.

PASS: I pointed out something that went wrong with FriendFeed once on FriendFeed - not only did they fix in within minutes, they actually acknowledged my note and told everyone what the issues was.

FAIL: What Twitter is doing.

If this problem spills over into tomorrow - or worse, Tuesday when the huge Web 2.0 Expo starts in San Francisco, expect a world of pain for Twitter. If they would simply acknowledge and update the users it might not be so bad. Otherwise we're going to see Bitchmeme taken to a whole new level.

Follow my updates on Twitter here. Not that you'll see said updates until they, you know, fix Twitter.

TechCrunch has taken the Techmeme Leaderboard and extracted the top authors since the beginning of this year. Not surprisingly, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch is #1 with Erick and Duncan of TechCrunch coming in at #2 and #4 respectively.

The rest of the top 10 is filled with likes of people I read everyday. Dignan, Blodget, Kirkpatrick, Ricker, Ingram, Savitz, and Stern.

My colleague Eric Eldon at VentureBeat comes in at #29 while Matt Marshall comes in at #71. Dean Takahashi (now with VentureBeat) also comes in at #62 with his work from his previous site.

You might recognize the guy coming in at #34 AND #38. I'll just note that when you add his stats together, he comes in at #7. Right behind Kirkpatrick, right ahead of Ricker. [update below]

I kind of like the dual listing though. It's like Cate Blanchett getting nominated for two Oscars this year for two different pieces of work.

[UPDATE]: Henry Work, the author of the article, is recalculating the list to account for authors on multiple sites. And it looks like I'll be coming in at #8 as Caroline McCarthy is actually on the list three times. Impressive.

[UPDATE 2]: With the post not even up an hour yet, Gabe Rivera has already predicted this as the new Bitchmeme. I am positive he will be right.

[UPDATE 3]: And upon further review, Henry says I get no love, I will remain a on the list twice as two separate people. Though accounting for ties, they have moved my #39 ranking for ParisLemon up to #38.

[UPDATE 4]: And as Gabe thought, this meme is now the #1 on Techmeme. I even have my own new shiny headline right under the TC post, which I believe puts me in sole position of the #38 spot - take that Paul Miller!

I noticed a few people thinking the same thing as me today: is everyone taking a break from Twitter? People do get burnt out from the web after all and it was a pretty nice weekend day in a lot of cities. But no, Twitter is broken. People are updating and most of the updates are simply not coming through.

Click on some of your friends' profiles. You'll see they have updates, yet those updates are probably not in your Twitter stream. But some are, making things even more confusing, and making it harder for people to tell that Twitter is broken.

We're all used to Twitter outages, but this is something different. Something behind the scenes is misfiring, but only just enough so that not everyone realizes. On top of that, I have this weird feeling that some people are tweeting less because they think no one else is. Twitter might be like a yawn in that regard - when you see someone else do it, you do it. If you don't, you might not.

I'm not sure if someone else has already noticed this, because I can't see if you Twittered it unless I go to your actual profile page. I did tweet about it as well, but since you probably can't see it, I'm writing it here.

Twitter broken. Needs fixing. Help!

A few weeks ago I wrote about my love of Muxtape, the super simple web version of the mix-tape. Now Internet Jogging has made the experience even better utilizing the web app web browser Fluid.

If you love the Coverflow view on iTunes, you're really gonna love this.

Marshall has a great write-up of it at ReadWriteWeb, but pretty much all you need to watch is the video below.

I plan on finally updating my own Muxtape tomorrow, now that I'm actually home where my music is. For now I'm enjoying Zelda's Muxtape - by the way, did you also see you can now favorite up to 12 Muxtapes at a time? I love the idea of limiting this, lest I favorite everything and that becomes yet another means of clutter in my life.

Hey FriendFeed, how about adding Muxtape support?

I think Mashable may have been upset that I used a picture of the TechCrunch writers in yesterday's post about dupes in FriendFeed, so today I get bombarded with the above picture in my FriendFeed stream.

Double the pleasure. Double the fun.

Holy Christ. This will speed along the transition to a Mac-ready workforce.



"Rock our sales with Vista and SP1."
"They'll say, 'Vista, gotta get me some.'"

[update]: Charles Cooper of CNET feels the need to inform everyone that the video was meant to be a spoof. Uh, no shit Charles! Just because it's a "spoof" does not give it a pass to be unfunny.

So no, the joke is not on us. Despite the spin, it's still on them. This video is a FAIL.

[via Gizmodo]

Dear TechCrunch and Mashable - I know you guys may have little beefs with each other every now and again, but you actually have more in common then you think. You both pretty much suck as using FriendFeed.

See the picture above? That shouldn't happen. I wouldn't see that if you would simply click the 'This blog has multiple authors' button on FriendFeed and put your name in. This has been around for a while now. This way, on TechCrunch when Mike does a post, it only shows up on Mike's stream, when Duncan does one, it's only in Duncan's etc.

VentureBeat may only have a couple guys who routinely use FriendFeed (Eric and I), but we have it sorted so as not to post each other's work.

Mashable, same thing applies to you guys (though I think Rizzn and Adam O. have it set up correctly now) - and thanks to Pete's insistence on using his Twitter stream as both a personal account and the one that displays all of Mashable's posts it is arguably worse. All of those tweets then go to FriendFeed as well, so we have the same blog posts over and over again being ported it, followed by the tweets about those same blog posts coming in over and over again.

I'm not perfect, I sometimes send out a tweet with a URL to a story I worked on if I think it will be interesting to people - and that in turn puts it in my FriendFeed stream along with the actual blog post link already there. But when I'm seeing the same posts 4 or 5 times from multiple people, it's tiresome.

Don't make me choose which authors I love most on each of your blogs and cut the rest.

Talk about the department of redundancy department - I'm drowning in dupes!