It's that time of year again... We've named the 2009 Utne Reader visionaries and you can read all about them in the November-December issue. If you want more, we've created a list of every Utne visionary with a Twitter account and with one click, they'll show up in your feed.

And while you're clicking, you can add the Utne Reader editorial staff.

Happy tweeting!

The deals are a “stunning one-two punch,” according to All Things Digital: Microsoft announced today that it has struck agreements to integrate real-time feeds of status updates from Twitter and Facebook into Bing. The deals are nonexclusive—which means Google could follow suit—but for the time being, Bing has something the search giant has yet to tap, at least in the case of Facebook. And get this: Microsoft is paying for it—exact terms, of course, haven’t been disclosed.

This is nonetheless “a precedent that the ability of search engines to index and link to content is worth some money,” Ryan Chittum writes for Columbia Journalism Review. “Where this goes from here no one knows. . . . Would the AP yank its news off Google if Bing paid and Google didn’t? Would it be worth it in the lost revenue from not showing up in as many search results? That’s too early to tell.”

One thing is clear, as Chittum says: This will be worth watching.

Sources: All Things Digital, Columbia Journalism Review

We Utne Reader editors love a good, geeky style row. (Recent disputes: Should Google, when used as a verb, be capitalized? Should we the titles of online publications be roman or italic?) And when we’re hashing things out, we tap every resource at our disposal: dictionaries, our awesome copy editor (hi Lynn!), published precedents, and, of course, stylebooks like the AP and Chicago guides.

Well, in that last category, there’s a new kid in town: Fake AP Stylebook, now up and running on Twitter, happy to irreverently answer your most irreverent style questions. The feed looks to be only about a day old, so who’s to say how long it’ll last—or if it’ll entirely go off the rails. For the time being, it’s definitely good for a nerdy if slightly off-color chuckle. Some highlights:

-- Use ‘sick!’ in brackets as an editorial comment on something awesome. Ex: ‘Apes with flamethrowers [sick!] burned the police station.’

-- Use quotation marks to express skepticism: Cher’s “Farewell Tour,” Creed’s “Best Album,” Jay Leno’s “comedy.”

-- @jason1749: We suspect you mean “teh.” The popularity of “the” will fade as the Internet fad passes and we return to teletypes.

Source: Fake AP Stylebook

(Thanks, kaeti.)

Green your Twitter feed—in a single click. Investigative reporter Osha Gray Davidson, editor and publisher of the Phoenix Sun, has set up a TweepML list for the Society of Environmental Journalists. With one click, users can follow 58 environmental reporters, writers, and publications, including Utne Independent Press Award-winning High Country News.

(Thanks, @orion_magazine.)

Sounding off about the government can be put to good use through the @2gov website. A user can enter his or her zip code, and the website will figure out who that person’s elected representatives are. Then, when that person expresses a political viewpoint and mentions @2 gov on Twitter, those views are reported directly to the government.

Representatives will start receiving detailed reports of what political views are being expressed on Twitter in an easily understood format. Users don’t need to know their representatives names, and the politicians don’t need to be on Twitter.  The website can also verify people’s voting status to let the representatives know that the voices on twitter actually represent their constituency. The idea is to move political discourse from Twitter’s website to your representatives’ ears.

(Thanks, @jakebrewer.)

Source:  @2Gov  

Jeff Clark makes my brain hurt, but first he makes me laugh. He's been charting word density on Twitter at his blog Neoformix, and the resulting line graphs are fabulous. You must see his time of day word correlations, where he picks a "word of interest" (in the exaple above, it's "drunk") and shows two words with a positive correlation and two with a negative correlation—all organized by time of day.

Source: Neoformix

Earlier this summer, as part of a master’s program at Emerson College, Kerry Skemp began blogging and tweeting about online commentary (i.e., comments left on websites or tweets) and its role in the future of publishing. The resultant blog, You’re Talking a Lot, but You’re Not Saying Anything, is filled with rich observations. For anyone who hasn’t been following all along, Skemp recently summed up the lessons learned with the ultimate “meta-commentary” post: “Commentary on My Commentary on Commentary.”

The distillation is fascinating stuff: a vision of online commentary that rebuffs proverbial complaints of commenters-as-trolls-and-idiots and slays simplistic traffic-building stratagems. “Online commentary both is and affects publishing,” Skemp writes. “It is publishing in the sense that it ‘makes public’ information that would otherwise remain private. In doing so, commentary (ideally) affects more than the commenter and the person being responded to.

“The unique nature of commentary on the internet allows it to be read by an unlimited number of people with varying levels of connection to the topic at hand. An astute comment can educate and inspire others; a negative or uninformed comment can motivate others to help educate. Admittedly, online commentary doesn’t give rise to enlightenment: but it can, and should.”

Finding enlightenment in a comment field might seem a bit farfetched, but Skemp backs up the claim with savvy observations that will be interesting to track as online comment infrastructure evolves. The presence of nasty (or self-serving) commenters, for example, means that “the art of commentary includes determining what to weed out,” a.k.a., a dose of media literacy. Additionally the “Twitterfication of commentary”—knowing who’s reading what you publish—injects accountability into the system, eliminating the anonymity under which bad manners and cheap shots flourish.

But more than commentary shifting toward more refined discourse, Skemp ultimately sees it functioning as a sort of super-discourse. “Commentary is the future of . . . search, and potentially even publishing,” she writes. “Commentary is the future of finding everything we need online, and responding to what is already online. Algorithms can only go so far without the human input that comes in the form of commentary: data showing what people think about other data.”

(Thanks, @R_Nash.)

Source: You’re Talking a Lot, but You’re Not Saying Anything

Image by preater, licensed under Creative Commons.

Book nerds and children’s literature nostalgics alike were treated today when Twitter exploded with the trending topic #failedchildrensbooktitles. Plenty of “failed titles” took the raunchy road—can it ever be helped on the internet?—while others proved good old fashioned humor still has a place online. Some of my non-offensive favorites (with their twittering creators in parenthesis):

Ramona Quimby, age 38 (@ the_games_afoot)

Furious George (@ swagner1031)

Little House on Stolen Land (@ kitchenartist)

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Mercury Poisoning (@ Fletcherism73)

Horton Hears The Who (@ NilsAParker)

The Bailout Tree (@ markolivas)

Punch the Bunny (@ manningtheship)

Nobody Else Poops (@ diablocody)

Where the Wild Things Eat You (@ bmerritt)

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Bertrand Russell  (@joshuacmurphy)

And on that note, if you haven’t yet watched this clip of Will Arnett reading from Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, you’re in for another children’s classics take-two treat.

Source: Twitter

A vacationer gazes at a serene sunset over the Mediterranean Sea and whips out his cell phones to compose the perfect Twitter message. Call it an addiction, but according to danah boyd, this need to obsessively update social networking sites is simply the latest embodiment of the human need to share—and sometimes over-share. She writes, “I really wouldn't be surprised if we found a cave painting that outlined what the dwellers ate for breakfast. So why are we so offended when people use the internet to do this?” The issue for boyd is one of moderation:

We like when people share their records. Until we don't. Cuz we also know that there is the notion of Too Much. There are only so many baby photos you can take of a baby that's not related to you before you scream Too Much. There are only so many home videos that you can take until you scream Too Much. And there are only so many vacation photos you can take until you scream Too Much.

Source: apophenia

Twitter will not single-handedly save journalism. It’s also not silly and dumb. “The single greatest export on the internet—greater, even, than information—is hyperbole,” Paul Constant writes for the Stranger, and the reactions to Twitter have dolled out hyperbole with gusto. Constant, a former Utne Reader contributor, dissects the Twitter phenomenon, the backlash, and the backlash to the backlash, in messages of fewer than 140 characters. He also includes some great insights into internet culture. Here are some excerpts: 

A great deal of time on the internet is spent finding different ways to say, "Oh, you didn't know that already? Huh. I've known for ages." 

Here's another truth: Nobody has any clue what's going on. That's why sneering at Twitter is worse than blindly loving Twitter.  

Historically, very little has been accomplished by being cynical (maybe some broken hearts have been prevented, but at what cost?).

Source: The Stranger 

Millions of tweets sounded off in support of Iranian protesters in Tehran last month, but nary a Washington-borne tweet has sung out from the recent healthcare hearings in Congress, or in political protest of Obama’s actions in Afghanistan, writes Alexander Cockburn for The Nation. Nor did the Twitter phenomenon (aka: “Twittergasms”) come to the aid of the estimated 20,000 killed and hundreds of thousands of displaced Tamil people of Sri Lanka earlier this year.

Could it be because Iranians are better looking, asks Cockburn? He writes:

I don't recall too many tweets in Washington or across this nation about a methodical exercise in carnage. But then, unlike those attractive Iranians, Tamils tend to be small and dark and not beautiful in the contour of poor Neda, who got out of her car at the wrong time in the wrong place, died in view of a cellphone and is now reborn on CNN as the Angel of Iran.

Source: The Nation 

Reports coming out of Iran from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and various blogs are giving foreigners an unprecedented view into the ongoing political crisis in the country. The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan, blogging from “a pier in Cape Cod,” has emerged as one of the major arbiters of information on the Iranian protests. Twitter and Facebook users are turning their profiles green in support of the protesters. The same technologies are giving idealists around the world the chance to engage in the crisis, both symbolically and actively. But just because people can engage, doesn’t mean they always should.

The raw, unedited nature of much of the information coming out of Iran could give every the impression that they know what’s really going on inside the country. The abject failure of cable news networks to cover the events reinforces that idea. Editor and Publisher recently admitted, “Web reports from Iranians, including Twitter feeds, have outflanked much of print and certainly cable TV.” With foreign reporters getting kicked out of the country, the reliance on social media for news will likely continue to grow.

As influential as social networking tools are in publicizing Iran’s conflict, much of that information has been unreliable. It was widely reported that opposition leader Mousavi was placed under house arrest, which was just one of many rumors that circulated and later turned out to be untrue. The best reporting, according to Kevin Drum writing for Mother Jones, may be coming from the BBC and the New York Times, and other mainstream, traditional outlets.

News from Iran has also made people “desperate to do something to show solidarity,” according to tech guru Clay Shirky in an interview with TED. Shirky said, “Reading personal messages from individuals on the ground prompts a whole other sense of involvement.” This has led people to help out the protesters, according to Shirky, by offering secure web proxies to help them mask their online identities. That sense of involvement, however, has the potential to lead people astray.

Some foreigners have been moved to launch web-based attacks against the Iranian state-run media, overwhelm the state’s servers with a constant stream of requests. Tech-President advocated this “bit of cyber aggression aimed at the Iranian government” as a way to channel the considerable energies of observers outside Iran. The process is so easy that I accidentally helped launch one of these attacks by clicking on an errant link while researching this blog post.

The motivation behind the web-attacks is understandable, but they may end up doing more harm than good. Evgeny Morozov, writing for Foreign Policy, points out that these attacks from other countries actually strengthen the Iranian government’s argument that “foreign intervention” is the driving force behind the protests. And if the attacks get bad enough, there’s a chance that the government could simply pull the plug on the highly centralized internet throughout the country, cutting off the Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube videos that feed the foreign knowledge of the protests.

Sources: The Atlantic, Editor and Publisher, Mother Jones, TED, Tech-President, Foreign Policy

Image by  Hamed Saber , licensed under  Creative Commons .

On the vaunted social networking site Twitter, users—both male and female—are more likely to follow men than women, according to a study from Harvard Business Publishing. On average, men have 15 percent more followers than women, even though they follow roughly the same number of people.

According to the study:
We found that an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman. Similarly, an average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman. Finally, an average man is 40% more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman.

Twitter’s gender divide stands in stark contrast to most social networking sites, according to the study, where “most of the activity is focused around women.” The lack of photos and detailed biographies are offered as possible reasons for the discrepancy.

(Thanks, Marginal Revolution.)

Source: Harvard Business Publishing

Writing a story in the 140 characters allowed by Twitter is nearly impossible, but Dan Baum has managed to do it. Baum chronicled his rise and fall as a staff writer for the New Yorker in bursts of fewer than 140 characters. Reading his page in chronological order from the bottom up, with all the unnatural line breaks, can be disorienting. But the story has wit, a plot, and plenty of windows into one of the most sought after jobs in writing.

Here are four Tweets that provide a good example of his Twitter narrative (Twarrative?):

“I must say, though, the office itself is a little creepy. I didn’t work there. I live in Colorado. But I’d visit 3-4X a year.”

“Everybody whispers.”

“It’s not exactly like being in a library; it’s more like being in a hospital room where somebody is dying.”

“Like someone’s dying, and everybody feels a little guilty about it.”

(Thanks, Bloggasm.)

Source: Dan Baum’s Twitter Page

The internet poo-bahs at Technorati say that blog authority is dropping. The most popular blogs on the internet have seen their “authority” scores, based on the number of other blogs linking to them, go down recently, even if their ranks relative to the rest of the internet remain the same.

This loss of blog authority doesn’t point to a loss of importance, Brian Solis writes for TechCrunch. It shows that the way people consume media has changed. Instead of writing competing blog posts, people are increasingly turning to Twitter or Facebook to respond and make their voices heard.

We are learning to publish and react to content in “Twitter time” and I’d argue that many of us are spending less time blogging, commenting directly on blogs, or writing blogs in response to blog sources because of our active participation in micro communities.

Now people need to figure out new ways to measure the importance of blogs, taking social networking and non-traditional derivative content into consideration. Solis writes, “Now, we have the ability to instantly interact with, respond, or promote blog content away from the source blog, but that shouldn’t make the original post any less valuable.”

Source: TechCrunch 

All the world’s a microblog, and all the men and women merely tweeters.  It’s tough to present an intelligent thought in the 140 characters allowed by Twitter, but someone has managed to summarize Shakespeare’s entire canon into tweets. Here are a few highlights: 

H: Mommy issues are just the beginning for a prince with a murdered father and new Uncle/Step-dad. Most everybody ends up dead.

TGoV: Two guys overcome both temporary exile from somewhere and their impulse-control issues and marry their long-suffering sweethearts.

KL: Old king learns too late that two of his kids only wanted power. He and most main characters die. One just gets his eyes gouged out.

(Thanks, Coudal.)

Update: The blogger has moved on to translating the show MASH and the Best Picture Oscar winners into tweets, too.

Technology is currently crying out for your attention. Twitter wants to know, “What are you doing?” Facebook is asking, “What are you doing right now?” There’s a good chance that your personal, work, and spam email accounts all have new messages waiting for you, friends or acquaintances may be inviting you to LinkedIn or Friendfeed, or maybe your cell phone is ringing. “Not long ago, it was easy to feel lonely,” William Deresiewicz writes for the Chronicle of Higher Education, “now it’s impossible to be alone.”

The technology demands constant attention, because that’s what people want. The “contemporary self,” according to Deresiewicz, “wants to be recognized, wants to be connected: It wants to be visible.” The websites offer visibility at no monetary cost, but users end up sacrificing their solitude, privacy, and, in some ways, the ability to be alone.

The technology has a spiritual cost, too. “Religious solitude is a kind of self-correcting social mechanism,” Deresiewicz writes, “a way of burning out the underbrush of moral habit and spiritual custom.” This kind of self-reflection is nearly impossible if people don’t quit tweeting, texting, and calling every once in a while.

The costs of constant contact become more extreme as technology improves. New applications for the iPhone and Google’s new G1 (which I bought 3 weeks ago), allow people to connect with Twitter, Facebook, and a host of location-aware applications at all times. Programs like WhosHere, Whrrl, and the dubiously named LifeAware give near-constant GPS-based updates to friends or strangers of where people are and how to connect.

Some of these location-aware applications go too far, even for tech enthusiasts. Mathew Honan, the man behind BarackObamaIsYourNewBicycle, explored the labyrinthine world of the GPS-based applications for Wired and found paradoxically, “I had gained better location awareness but was losing my sense of place.”

The flood of tweets, updates, and friend request can quickly become indistinguishable from real life (aka RL). The din can easily stand in the way of deeper thoughts and self-reflection. “In effect,” according to the Winter 2007 issue of n+1, “this mode of constant self-report can be summed up in a single phrase: “I am on the phone. I am on the phone. I am on the phone.’”

Image by Juhan Sonin, licensed under Creative Commons.

At an undisclosed location, somewhere in the United States, a public relations man is chronicling the demise of the media as we know it—and he’s doing it in short bursts of 140 characters or less.

If you are a journalist or media organization who is not on Twitter, you should be. And once you’re there, you should subscribe to the daily beating that is a Twitter feed called themediaisdying.

There you’ll find the rat-a-tat-tat of daily media executions. Here’s a sampling of the devastation:

VIBE has lost an associate music editor, Shanel Odum.

MAD MAGAZINE is going quarterly

VARIETY could have cuts this week

The February WIRED is only 113 pages, of which only 31.5 are ad pages - not the usual 1:1 ratio.

It is brutal, but that is not its founder’s intention. “It started as a closed group of our eight founders,” the anonymous ringleader of themediaisdying (lets call him Mr. Dying) tells Utne Reader. Each of the eight founders are employed in the public relations industry—either in-house or on a freelance basis. The Twitter account was mostly a way to keep track of their clients (and potential clients) in the print media industry. “But the point of Twitter is to be open, right? So we opened it up.” The open account launched on December 19 with this posting: "RUMOR: LA TIMES is considering getting rid of its national and foreign bureaus. Can anyone confirm?”

Today themediaisdying has more than 10,000 followers and gets upwards of 75 tips a day. A tip could take the form of a leaked memo or it could be an e-mail that simply reads: “Hey, I just got fired.”

“I’m spending about 90 minutes a day on Twittering and following up on leads,” says Mr. Dying, who resents the characterization that he and his comrades somehow relish in the demise they are chronicling. “It’s tragic!”

What’s more, the people behind themediaisdying most definitely have something to lose if their identities are revealed. “There would be adverse effects if we were to be exposed—and I put that in big quotes. We still have to work with the media.”

You can read the dispatches of Mr. Dying and his crew here and you can follow the Utne Reader Twitter feed here. May our paths never cross.

While millions tuned in to watch Barack Obama’s inauguration on TV, a conversation was raging on the microblogging site Twitter. Some expected the site would be overwhelmed by the influx of traffic, but it held up remarkably well, allowing journalists, celebrities, and general netizens to chime in on the day’s proceedings. 

We’ve compiled a few of our favorite insights below. And don’t forget to visit the Utne Reader twitter page while you’re over there.

On the scene:

NewsHour : Sign down on the mall says "We Have Overcome"

anamariecox: People mobbing police officers, desperate for direction. Metaphor? 

PatrickRuffini: Bearded bohemians richly represented

justacoolcat: Big crowd. So when do they release the bulls?

jdickerson: I believe that the Secret Service had to clear Aretha's hat

Media Criticism:

Kaeti: How I wish that Hulu's live coverage wasn't sponsored by Mall Cop.

gmarkham : CBC reporter to kid: "Who's cooler Obama or Kanye West?" WTF? 

Jeffjarvis: If people would stop writing tweets predicting that Twitter will fail, maybe that will lighten the load enough so it doesn't fail.

jdlasica : Now that The Speech is over, telemarketing calls have resumed. God bless America!

jayrosen_nyu: Get ready for four years of "...If you thought the election of Barack Obama was going to bring an end to partisanship, well, think again."

On George W. Bush:

attackerman : GWBush listens to Feinstein's call for 'real and necessary change' like I'M SITTING RIGHT HERE 

hragvartanian : In a perfect world the helicopter Bush is leaving on should drop him off at Gitmo. 

jeffshaw : Bush is being taken to the Hague off-camera right now. Right? 

mollypriesmeyer: Get in your 'copter, crook!

Personal Reflection:

hodgman : As a former woodwinder myself, I am not embarrassed to say: that is one handsome clarinetist. 

msaleem : Obama is already killing my productivity.

JasonBarnett : President Obama's speech was spectacular. Can't wait to read it really really slowly, to infuse each word into my soul.

mfraase : Holy smokes! That was the longest eight years of my life. 

youngamerican : Well, I cried like a fucking baby. 

MCHammer: Pac this is for you....I know how you dreamed of this...I'm throwing a 2 in the air in your memory...love you !! Amen! 

The Mars Phoenix Lander has accrued thousands of friends and fans on Facebook and Twitter since “dying” last week, when the red planet’s freezing temperatures ended the machine's functionality, Scientific American reports.

NASA spokeswoman Virginia McGregor became a pseudo-celebrity when she began transmitting Twitter tweets and Facebook messages on the lander’s behalf. This proves that 1) social networking is inescapable, even in space; and 2) humans can mourn inanimate objects in record numbers.

For a space program with a history of public relations problems, harnessing the power of social networking to eulogize the Phoenix was a brilliant bit of marketing, and a great way to exploit the sentimentality of space geeks like [sniff] yours truly.

The seldom-reliable but often-entrancing microblogging site Twitter has a new page dedicated to reports from voters. Twitter users around the country are sending in reports of how long they’ve had to wait in line, voting irregularities, and any inane observations that come of the top of their heads. The site is designed to give constant updates for voters, advocacy groups, and journalists. It also runs the danger of driving people insane with the flood of information. Current TV has partnered with Twitter and is featuring this video about the site.

For some on-site coverage tonight, be sure to check in with Utne Reader’s Twitter page, as Cally Carswell sends updates from Obama’s rally in Chicago.

Government agencies are hopping on the Twitter bandwagon, with mostly good results, reports Silicon Alley Insider. Followers of the State Department receive updated travel alerts and country information, the FDA tweets about food safety news, and the U.S. Geological Survey posts a surprising amount of useful links, about rocks (naturally) but also about topics like alternative energy, natural resources, and the environment.

Of course, not all of the newly Twittering agencies are making the most of microblogging. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, tends to post—and infrequently, at that—about the country’s much-mocked color-coded threat level. The intentions are good, perhaps, but the information is hardly crucial to most people.

On the whole, it’s great to see the government going with the instant-information flow by using this service. Most people can appreciate getting condensed versions of pertinent news without having to navigate the overcrowded, out-of-date messes that are many government websites.

(Thanks, World Hum)

Image courtesy of trekkyandy, licensed under Creative Commons.

The internet is buzzing with news about John McCain’s VP pick, Sarah Palin. Bloggers are struggling to figure out who the Alaskan governor really is. Twitter user Eamon 1916 claims that, “Sarah Palin taught MacGuyver [sic] everything he knows.”  Twitter user Dabolos writes, “Sarah Palin isn't qualified for VP, but she did stay in a Holiday Inn last night.

The posts aren’t true, but they’re part of a “Little Known Facts” meme jetting around Twitter. Other favorites from CNetNews include: “Sarah Palin wants more cowbell” and “Sarah Palin knows who was on the grassy knoll.” Michael Turk, another Twitter user, is credited with starting the trend. 

Fake Sarah Palin news can also be found on the blog Welcome to the PalinDrome, where the authors poke fun at “liberels [sic]” and have asked readers to contribute money for a new snowmobile. The site seems to be taking cues from the fake Harriet Meiers blog that appeared when Meiers was nominated as a potential Supreme Court justice.

The real battle ground in the fight for Palin information was her Wikipedia page, even before her nomination was announced. NPR News reports that a pseudonymous user known as “Young Trigg” began editing Palin’s Wikipedia page hours before the nomination was made public. The user, whose name may be a reference to Palin’s youngest child Trig, made some 30 edits, all of which cast Palin in a positive light. Young Trigg chose to deemphasize Palin’s experience in a beauty pageant and focused the entry on her governing prowess and tenacity as a high school basketball player.

Image by  Thomas Roche , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

When inspiration strikes, there’s not always a computer around to record the ideas. Like cocktail napkin sketches, or ideas written on the back of a person’s hand, the website Deeplinking has compiled a few pen-on-paper prototypes of ideas that became websites.

The photo at left, for example, was the original design for the micro-blogging site Twitter, then called Stat.us. The current design of Utne.com, in fact, was once little more than chicken scratches on a torn piece of paper. For a more in-depth and active example, Deeplinking also provides an impressive, moving paper prototype in the YouTube link below.

Image by jack dorsey, licensed under Creative Commons.