And the NYTimes delivers [yay]

That discussion I was hoping for? Here's a taste

Utility in the Jumble of Twittered Thoughts

Thank you New York Times.

Things I hope we can talk about now [Setting myself up for disappointment]

It's far from Christmas and it's not my birthday but I'm going to ahead and make a wish anyway. Here are the thing about which I'm really excited to see intelligent analysis following the drama of #amazonfail

1. The massive gaps/fails (loooove NiemanLab's use of #mediafail in reference to this debacle) that came to light. Author Craig Seymour says that his book was de-ranked back in February, and media outlets weren't interested. Will they only be interested now because it's had a day of internet madspin? How much of it has to do with the Easter holiday? How much to do with less reporters reporting? How much to do with the subject at hand?

2. Amazon is consistently pointed to as one of the kings of predictive search, behavioral targeting and general keyword mastery. What does this massive fail say about that? Does it make us question who, if anyone (besides Google), really is a leader in this area? Is it scary that someone who supposedly uses it so well screwed it up so royally, making it clear that the knowledge gap in this arena is even wider than a casual glance makes clear? Are we all even on the same page about how important this type of technology is to the next phase of making $$ on the web?

3. Twitter as a news-breaking entity. I know. I don't really want to talk about it either. But here we are. Not talking about it is silly. There will likely be a lot of whining and complaining and disagreeing and "but how will the monetize-ing," but it would be nice to see discussion on how the power of Twitter (I can't believe I just typed that) can be harnessed and used by traditional outlets on a regular basis - if at all.

And what remains to be seen, is what Amazon will do. While a Publisher's Weekly report that a representative called is a "glitch" crashed their site, an LA Times blog reports that indeed, they're trying to play this off as a mistake.

Best of luck with that, Amazon.

(And ps, I found the link to the LA Times through following the trend topic "glitch" on Twitter.)

When Twitter breaks news [This hurts me more than it hurts you]

Apparently, late last week, Amazon started stripping rankings from books it deemed "adult" in nature. Not surprisingly, there seems to be a lack of rhyme to their reason - or some would say, definite rhyme to their reason - suppress books that have gay themes; ie: Brokeback Mountain's ranking has been removed, Playboy's The Complete Centerforlds still has its ranking.

I found out about this just because I randomly decided to look at the top trending topics on Twitter. One was #amazonfail. I had to read a few tweets to see what that meant and I was able to quickly discover it had something to do with some new policy. So I went to Google to search "Amazon policy" and came up with nothing. Went to Google News search and found nothing. So back to Twitter (ugh), where after reading more tweets, I was lead to this blog entry, which seems to be where it all started, a mere 12 hours ago.

Then I went to Amazon and checked out some titles. Seems to be true.

So I went back to Google and searched "Amazon.com adult policy." Nothing. Searched Google News. Nothing. Also haven't seen anything show up within my usually-on-this-type-of-thing Facebook network.

Regardless of right or wrong, this will be a PR nightmare for Amazon, and will eventually make it to the mainstream. The question is, how long will it take? And I guess the more interesting point here is that Twitter beat everything else for timely delivery.

Oy.

Note: At the time of this posting, there are only 6 Google results when I search '"Amazon Follies" Mark Probst' (the name of the blog post and blog author of the incident that started it all). Twitter is showing up about 10 new results every 30 seconds.

UPDATE: More here - #Amazonfail and the politics of anti-corporate cyber-activism

And a Google-bomb attack attempt is already underway.

Still no Google News results. The top Google web results belong to aggregators, keyword hoarders and twitter-bots.

Aggregated realtime keyword search results = local news? [Getting there from here]

In an interview, Twitter CEO, Even Williams said (translated by Google from German): "We are currently thinking about an extension that notifies the user what is happening in its immediate vicinity is happening. Depending on where I am staying, I could then learn about that a few streets away a fire is burning."

TechCruch writes an article titled Twitter To Start Serving Local News To Users?

*Sigh*

This morning, there was a fatal and shocking shooting incident at a church near my hometown. More specifically, the church is 2 small towns over, the victim is from my hometown and the perpetrator is from 3 small towns over. The shooting happened around 8:30am. I heard about it for the first time around 11:30am via Facebook. Once it was brought up, my mom mentioned that it had been announced in church - probably around 9:30. By the time I checked Twitter around 12:30pm, Maryville (the name of the town where the shooting happened) was the 3rd trending topic (popular keyword). The first appearance was around 9:30am.

All this to say that as much as I am still mostly annoyed by most things surrounding the existence of Twitter, at its core it has its uses - and if understood and harnessed correctly, maybe even the majority of the press wouldn't be able to miss them.

If Twitter had a tool that "notifies the user what is happening in its immediate vicinity," I would have known about the national news that happened a few miles from my hometown within an hour of it happening instead of 3 hours later. A good number of the early tweets in the Twitter search string link to CNN, the local CBS station (KMOV), etc. - actual news outlets. So I'd get to the local news via Twitter, and I guess I'd technically have received "news" of it from Twitter, but the actual reporting come from where I'd expect it to.

Am I arguing semantics? Some may say yes, but in this environment of the constant overblown discussion of whether or not bloggers will replace reporters, the TechCrunch headline is worth calling out, the semantics are worth being understood.

Within 3-5 hours after the shooting, the tweets started to get less helpful. Tweethounds were using the keyword with truncated urls that would appear to be to a news story but really led to their Twitter profile. Aggregators got in on the keyword by reporting its rank in hopes of newbies deciding their feed is "the place" to keep up with what's trending. Random people were using the keyword just so their account would show up in the search string. Basic Twitter uselessness.

But now, some 12+ hours later, interesting links are starting to show up in tweets - pastor responses, personal accounts, etc. Takes a little more mining to get to the interesting stuff, but it's there for the seeker.

And there you have the data rainbow of Twitter. Harness the first hour or so of that into an alert and that's a service I would find useful. Would I want it to serve as my "local news?" No. Would the alert be as useful without the links to local news stories? Maybe not? Would local news reports get more (free) play if there was an alert system like that? Likely.

See kids? Appropriate usage and teamwork. Fabulous concepts.

I overreacted [Mea Culpa]

It was actually a pretty good article.

Stars micro-blog their lives on Twitter

That's sooooo nine days ago [Questionable allocation of resources]

Over a week ago (Saturday, February 21st, to be exact) Michael Ian Black declared the first ever Twitter war on none other than LeVar Burton. Hilarity and odds on BetUS.com ensued. Many tweets later, it was all over by Wednesday, February 25th (truce was called, everyone won).

Today, I repeat TODAY Michael Ian Black tweets that he "just got off the phone with the AP who [is] doing a story on LeWar."

There are two possibilities here:

1. AP is doing (yet another) story about Twitter in general (because OMG there aren't enough of these ill-informed missives clogging up our news day already) and referring to LeWar as an illustration of something or other.

2. AP is doing an actual story on the actual LeWar a full NINE DAYS (and counting) LATER proving that it isn't that journalism is dead, but that, well, I don't even know what to say.

Perhaps some questions will help me verbalize:

- Given the immediate and viral nature of Twitter, is there a point to a traditional one-to-many story covering something that you kind of have to experience to get and a full NINE DAYS (and counting) LATER at that?

- Would not a shorter story, during the event be more relevant? Maybe even some sort of app that tracks progress, or a mock-serious blow by blow (in the same spirit as the BetUS post)?

- In the midst of, oh, I dunno, lots of real drama going on in the world, is LeWar truly worthy of an actual thought out story NINE DAYS (and counting) LATER?

I hope I'm wrong and jumping on my soapbox too quickly. I hope that the AP is working on a story about actual effective uses of Twitter, and using LeWar as an example.

I hope. Because, really.

Michael Ian Black on Twitter
LeVar Burton on Twitter

Live and in virtual person [The press is falling]

Though everyone's on edge and continuously waiting for the other shoe to drop, it's still horrifying when it happens, especially when we all remember, as humans, that all this drama comes home to roost at the doors of actual people, with families. And even more so when technology allows us to get a front row seat. It was announced today at noon that Denver Rocky Mountain News would publish its last edition tomorrow. How's that for short notice?

Denver Rock Mountain News liveblog of the actual announcement >
Denver Rocky Mountain News newsroom Twitter account >

Because, really.