That’s NPR’s Andy Carvin talking about what it means when he uses retweets, specifically during his coverage of Middle Eastern revolutions. Carvin’s answer to every modern journalist’s favorite question — isn’t a retweet basically an endorsement? — is one of the best I’ve heard.
-LB
That’s shaggy-haired Luke Matheny, who a) won the Best Live-Action Short Oscar last night and b) speaks the truth. His hair was galactically awful, confirming every stereotype you might have about the kind of person whose senior thesis would be a short film about “a lounge singer who is given love-inducing darts to woo the woman of his dreams.”
DISCLOSURE: I have a history of going overboard in my analysis of the short films categories. (Can I force a 9/11 reference into an article about the 2002 Best Animated Short? Yes I can.)
-JN
That’s The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal with the reveal of the year.
-LB
That’s Bernie Madoff in a lengthy interview with New York Magazine. And I think I can counter Bernie’s complaint about his good deeds not getting notice with the fact that he, you know, stole billions of dollars and ruined the lives of countless people. Madoff would also like the world to know he has many painful therapy sessions, has been misunderstood, is not a sociopath, and is, deep down, a good person. And that’s the infuriating thing about criminals like Madoff. Even when everything is all said and done, and their lies are out in the open and they’ve begun paying for them, they still find a way to justify their own BS.
-DM
That’s Charlie Sheen, who gave interviews to both the Today show and Good Morning America, and both interviews are filled with the kind of deluded, unhinged lunacy we all fully expect from Sheen these days. Whatever he made from CBS could easily be doubled if he just has his own reality show. Bonus points to Sheen for openly smoking during his ABC interview. Really drives the point home. It’s also worth noting that Sheen looks AWFUL, like he’s ready to die right there on camera. Given his current trajectory, I fully expect that to happen by Friday. It’s almost irresponsible to interview him at this point. It’s like poking a bear. A bear that sleeps with porn stars.
-DM
That’s a very small portion of Charlie Sheen’s call-in rant to the Alex Jones radio show, a rant that convinced CBS to shut down the show for the rest of the season and could cost hundreds of people their jobs. You can listen to the entire rant here, and I promise you that all eight minutes of it are just as nutty as the quote above. I think “addict” is probably too pleasant of a term to describe Sheen at this point.
Listen closely, children of America. Not every drug story ends in cushy rehab or a romantic death. Sometimes, drugs turn you into a terrifying he-demon. Stay away.
-DM
25 People To Avoid On Wall St. List Only Makes Me Angrier At Wall St. We currently live in an age where Wall Street bankers are about as popular as contracting leprosy. So the last thing I really ever want to read is a former Wall St. VP on telling you who to avoid if you work on Wall St. Oh, do you NOT work on Wall Street? Do you not get lavish bonuses every year and eat caviar out of hollowed-out elephant tusks? Well, I’m sure you’ll still be amused by tips such as, “Avoid the girl who cries at her desk.” It’s so true! Because girls are such losers! And they have very small hands that can’t hold enough Federal grant money! The next time I hear a banker complain, it better be because his jail guard was being impolite.
-DM
“Klout for Business: A Useful Metric –but an Incomplete View of Your Customer,” a post by Jeremiah Owyang, taking a look at the benefits and insufficiencies of Klout.
As someone who spent a good deal of the last few months tracking down local Twitter users who actually tweet about local things (yes, for this here Tumblr account), I can say that relative influence is all that really matters. So for my purposes, it didn’t matter to me when Klout told me @twittsmcgee is an influencer in New York City — if she’s not actually tweeting about what is happening in this fair city, her 60+ score was useless to me.
And this will always be the case. Influence is always a relative thing. (Does anyone outside of a newsmagazine want to argue whether, say, Joe Biden or LeBron James is more influential?)
Klout’s CEO and co-founder Joe Fernandez points out in the comments that “Behind the scenes we have much more granular data that we use to target for the campaigns we work on with brands.” And that’s for the brands who pay for their proprietary data to decide. But if Klout keeps that data to itself, I don’t see how the front facing score really has much meaning to people who are trying to pin down an individual’s “influence.”
One last quick hit: In response to a tweet about using Klout to identify local influencers, the man most frequently hailed as an influencer (Chris Brogan), responded “I’m not a fan. It only identifies Twitter users who get lots of retweets.” Amen.
-LB
