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20 Sep 2009 21:05

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Politics: Oh great. Glenn Beck is on the cover of Time.

  • We’ve got to pull together, because we are facing dark, dark times. I don’t trust a single weasel in Washington. I don’t care what party they’re from. But unless we trust each other, we’re not going to make it.
  • Glenn Beck • As quoted in a Time cover story called “Mad Man: Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?” (We lean yes, based on our discourse over the last few weeks.) The article discusses Beck’s nature, history in radio, and how, over a single summer, he became this … phenomenon. And if you disagree with him, it comes to bite you in the rear-end: “The more the host is criticized, the more committed the original audience becomes,” the Time article argues. Why can’t our pudgy middle-aged guys be like Kevin James? • source

21 Jun 2009 22:13

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Politics, Tech: Dear Washington Post columnists: Give Twitter credit for Iran

  • What the heck, guys?

    John Palfrey, Bruce Etling and Robert Faris, you guys don’t get it. You just don’t. A lengthy response to the Twitter protest tool phenomenon is not the way to go.

    You tore it apart for the very reasons it’s useful, such as its brevity (the revolution will not be in speech form), the fact that lots of people use it and create a glut of information (much of which is retweets), and the fact that dissenters on both sides can use it.

    You have one moderately valid point: The government can block the access. Good thing they’re using proxy servers!

  • A bad example

    Here’s the real reason why you really don’t get it – you credited Andrew Sullivan for creating the hype around the protests, rather than the protesters themselves.

    We’d like to use the example of @iranriggedelect. We were an early follower of the great resource, and we recommended them when they had three followers. Now they have 10,000+.

    And of course, Twitter had to nudge CNN. Face it – Twitter isn’t people just talking. It’s media. And this media works differently.

    Please figure out why. source

12 Feb 2009 10:19

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Tech: Breaking down the Facebook “25 things” phenomenon

Slate put way too much time into analyzing the viral nature of this fad. source