Don't expect us to fall for your witchcraft logic, Delaware also-ran Christine O'Donnell. Your support of Mitt Romney, when questioned today on CNN about his inconsistencies over the years, was met by the most baffling of endorsements ever...unless you were trying to ruin his campaign? Through black magic??
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After walking out of her interview with Piers Morgan, Christine O’Donnell addressed the Women’s National Republican Club on West 51st Street, starting about 45 minutes late, just before 7. “I want to apologize for being so late. I know that’s not respectful of your time, so please accept my apology,” Ms. O’Donnell began. “We started Read More
Last night, after her Piers Morgan walk-out, Christine O'Donnell spoke briefly at the Women’s National Republican Club about her memoir, Troublemaker, and about the virtue of pulling together and showing cohesiveness as a party going into the 2012 elections. "I told it in a way that some political advisors have said was a little too honest," Ms. O'Donnell said, "and I probably shouldn't have admitted some things." Read More
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has come out against "perp walks", reports the Post--the forced march of famous suspects before the media--now that the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case looks weaker. "I've always thought perp walks were outrageous," said the Mayor, comparing the walks to "Roman times" for their presumption of guilt. How things have changed! On May Read More
The Brooklyn Museum announced three new trustees today, including what the Museum said was the first artist in recent times to serve on the board. The new trustees are New York Law School Professor Tamara C. Belinfanti, Forest City Ratner Executive Vice President David L. Berliner, and Brooklyn arist Fred Tomaselli, whose work Read More
Mark Halperin's suspension from his MSNBC commentating gig for suggesting that President Barack Obama was "a dick"--after asking for a seven-second delay for his extremely premeditated slip of the tongue--calls to mind so many recent suspensions: David Shuster's, from MSNBC, for saying Hillary Clinton had "pimped out" her daughter Chelsea during the Read More
In light of this morning's New York Times acknowledgment that a candidate in the Republican field for 2012 is a woman--"Mrs. Bachmann's rivals," we are told, "will have to find ways to disagree with Mrs. Bachmann without being accused of making subtle references to her gender"--we decided to look back at how many times the Read More
Today's cover of Newsweek, with a digitally-aged Lady Di hobnobbing with Kate Middleton, raised our eyebrows--and not merely for the suggestion that, had she lived, Diana would have been "Tweeting from Davos" (wouldn't she have delegated telling her story to a Twitter-age Andrew Morton?). Why, in our unscientific count, it was the fourth time Read More
Nick Denton tapped his microphone between five and eight times to get the attention of the crowd gathered on Gawker Media’s rooftop. “This is pretty good timing,” he said, alluding either to the just-passed rainstorm or the ongoing marriage-equality debate in Albany. Mr. Denton had volunteered use of the Gawker roof for a fundraiser for Read More
On Monday afternoon, activists on both sides of the same-sex marriage debate flooded the third floor of the State Capitol, toting handmade signs, chanting rhyming slogans and singing religious songs in the fervent belief that after this week nothing would ever be the same. “If this passes, we will have Sodom and Gomorrah, literalized,” said Read More
I’ve always been a big believer that its not the length of your project that counts, but how you use it. Apparently I was misinformed, because today the fund raising platform Kickstarter announced that it will cut the maximum length for projects from 90 to 60 days in an effort to get more of them successfully funded.
“Over our first two years, the projects that have given themselves the most amount of time to reach their funding goal have actually done it less often than any other projects on Kickstarter. The overall success rate is 44 percent, but for 90 day projects (our max) it’s 24 percent,” writes co-founder Yancey Strickler.
Chart via Kickstarter
There is typically a groundswell of support at the beginning of a project from the creator’s friends, family and fans. Towards the end donations spike again when donors jump in to help the project cross the threshold or ensure their reward.
“During the middle periods of a project pledging slows considerably. It’s a trough. Without the excitement of the new or the looming deadline’s call to action, projects need external stimuli (press, events, milestones) to generate activity. This is not always easy to do.What projects with longer durations are primarily doing, then, is extending the trough. A more compressed time-frame minimizes the slower weeks and places greater emphasis on the beginning and end. There’s an inherent momentum that carries a project through, and keeps backers engaged and excited. We believe shorter durations will extend that experience to more projects.”
Chart via Kickstarter
LulzSec Twitter Avatar
Few hackers groups in the history of the internet age have claimed responsibility for attacks on so many prominent targets in such a short period of time.
“For the past month and a bit, we’ve been causing mayhem and chaos throughout the internet,” wrote LulzSec today, ”attacking several targets including PBS, Sony, Fox, porn websites, FBI, CIA, the U.S. government, Sony some more, online gaming servers (by request of callers, not by our own choice), Sony again, and of course our good friend Sony.”
What follows is a diatribe on the nature of public hacking and the insatiable appetite of netizens for entertainment, no matter how cruel of illegal the source.
At first it seems like LulzSec is making a case for hacking and disclosing big security vulnerabilities. “This is what you should be fearful of, not us releasing things publicly, but the fact that someone hasn’t released something publicly. We’re sitting on 200,000 Brink users right now that we never gave out. It might make you feel safe knowing we told you, so that Brink users may change their passwords. What if we hadn’t told you? No one would be aware of this theft, and we’d have a fresh 200,000 peons to abuse, completely unaware of a breach.”
But quickly the tone of the message shifts to a more unapologetic, anarchic one. “Yes, yes, there’s always the argument that releasing everything in full is just as evil, what with accounts being stolen and abused, but welcome to 2011. This is the lulz lizard era, where we do things just because we find it entertaining. Watching someone’s Facebook picture turn into a penis and seeing their sister’s shocked response is priceless. Receiving angry emails from the man you just sent 10 dildos to because he can’t secure his Amazon password is priceless. You find it funny to watch havoc unfold, and we find it funny to cause it. We release personal data so that equally evil people can entertain us with what they do with it.”
A hacker with a public Twitter account is a dangerous and novel thing. It means an immediate feedback loop between their mischief and their fans (and enemies). It encourages them to keep moving from project to project and connects them with an army of thrill seekers who make prank phone calls and exploit compromised accounts. Just as #weinergate showed us the new breed of political scandal, LulzSec is internet chaos moving at Twitter speed and scale.
We can't all be da mayor.
Ahhh lurkers, where would the internet be without them. While Foursquare has growing steadily, adding around one million users every month and half during 2011, co-founder Dennis Crowley say that to truly hit scale, Foursquare needs to find a way to offer value to users who don’t check in.
Speaking at the 92nd street Y for the #140 conference this week, Crowley pointed out that Twitter, five percent of users account for 75 percent of the activity. In fact, according to research from Sysmos, 21 percent have never written a tweet and 85 percent update less than once per day.
A lot of those users, however, are on Twitter to follow their favorite celebrities or friends. Some are keeping track of a particular hashtag to keep up with news events like the #arabspring or #weinergate.
On Foursquare, it would be a little strange (you stalker) to follow people without participating.The service is less of a platform for public figures and more of a social network for friends to keep tabs on one another.
But with the introduction of the explore feature, Foursquare is positioning itself as a city guide as well. So it would make sense for a user to join, follow a few friends who are active users that share similar tastes, and use the recommendations generated from that activity. ”As with any social service, you have a core of active people doing things like sharing or checking in, and others who are more commenters or consumers,” says co-founder Naveen Selvadurai. “Having all types of people in our community makes for a better experience for everyone.”
Foursquare might also consider partnering with taste makers to who could be followed by users particularly interested in good coffee, bookstores or public parks. This would be something akin to the list model created by Dinevore. Users might also be able to follow brands which could offer specials, adding economic value to these infrequent check in types.
“A lot of people will look through foursquare Tips when they arrive at a place; it’s a good source of suggestions and insider info, from friends, celebrities, and the foursquare community,” says Selvadurai.
As Foursquare looks to close a big round of funding this summer, focusing on a way to attract and engage casual users seems like a smart priority. “We look at how people use foursquare, and try and increase the value they get out of it. That’s why we created comments (tons of people were texting friends they saw checking in), and Tips (people want to share their expertise). A big part of the foursquare experience has value even if you’re not checking in, because there’s a ton of knowledge that is shared within the community,” says Selvadurai. “In the future, we’re going to find more ways to share more of that, whether it’s more personalized recommendations or better social sharing tools. We’re just at the start of what we hope to be able to do.”
Adweek editor Michael Wolff gets only a few seconds of screen time in Page One. But thanks to a vitriolic review of the cheerleadery-but-effective New York Times documentary he published just hours before the premiere (“Agonizing to watch! … Aggressively unattractive!”), Mr. Wolff was the topic of many conversations at the postscreening bash Monday Read More
