Twitter In The News

Both USA Today and Reuters use Twitter—CNN Story, too :

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Ashton Kutcher -- Twitter's top tweeter --
warned he may pull the plug on his tweeting if the micro-blogging service partners
on a reality TV show.

"It's all fun and games until somebody gets stalked," Kutcher wrote in a Twitter
posting late Monday.

Variety magazine reported Monday that San Francisco-based Twitter.com had
partnered with TV producers Reveille and Brillstein Entertainment on an unscripted
show that would be "putting ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format."

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said there was "no official Twitter TV show" in the works,
but "we have a lightweight, non-exclusive, agreement with the producers which helps
them move forward more freely."

Kutcher used Twitter to post a link to a news report about the partnership along with
this message: "Wow I hope this isn't true. I really don't like being sold out. May have
to take a twitter hiatus."

The actor, who boasts a record 2 million Twitter followers, frequently posts updates
that take fans behind the scenes of his life and his current movie production --
"Five Killers."

"Five Killers" director Robert Luketic, who caught Kutcher's Twitter addiction, also
suggested he would disappear from the Twitterverse.

"Ahh yeah. If this is true my shop is closed," Luketic tweeted in response to Kutcher's
message.

Kutcher challenged CNN last month in a race to 1 million Twitter followers, which he
won. His following has almost doubled that in the five weeks since.

His wife, actress Demi Moore, also threatened to shut down her Twitter account,
which has more than 1 million followers.

"I hope this isn't true -- if it is, our Twitter time may come to a quick and sad end!"
Moore tweeted Monday.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Good Twitter Article in the Newspaper

State of the Art
Twitter? It’s What You Make It
By DAVID POGUE (New York Times)

Writing can be solitary work, but not when you write a tech column. Feedback pours in so quickly — by e-mail, on blogs, in online comments — that it’s almost real-time performance art.

For the longest time, my readers kept nagging me to check out this thing called Twitter. I’d been avoiding it, because it sounded like yet another one of those trendy Internet time drains. E-mail, blogs, chat, RSS, Facebook. ... Who has time to tune in to yet another stream of Internet chatter?

True, there’s nothing quite like Twitter. It’s a Web site where you can broadcast very short messages — 140 characters, max — to anyone who’s signed up to receive them. It’s like a cross between a blog and a chat room. Your “followers” might include six friends from high school, or, if you’re Barack Obama, 254,484 of your most tech-savvy fans. (Incidentally, he hasn’t sent out a single Twitter message since taking office. Where are his priorities?)

Meanwhile, you sign up to receive the utterances of other people. Eventually, your screen fills with a scrolling display of their quips — jokes, recommended links, thoughts for the day, and a lot of “what I’m doing right now” stuff.

Even so, I was turned off by the whole ego thing. Your profile displays how many followers you have, as if it’s some kind of worthiness tally. (See also: Facebook friend counter.)

Then one day, I saw Twitter in action.

Read the rest of the article here