After TMZ's Harvey Levin busted Maria Shriver for talking on a cell phone while driving, her husband Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised to give her a firm spanking. Possibly in a metaphorical sense. Possibly not.

Slashfilm's David Chen praised a fellow Asian American for her dogged fight against racial misconceptions.

Joel Madden, of the band Good Charlotte, knows you're secretly obsessed with him, Rolling Stone "girl."

Gotham-to-San-Francisco transplant Caroline McCarthy can start worrying about the pool of men in her new hometown.... NOW.

Please no one tell Twitter co-founder Biz Stone that this particular Seinfeld episode never aired, and never will air. It's made him so very happy.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Though they've always admitted they could possibly, maybe, potentially open the door to advertisers, Twitter founder Biz Stone seemed to chart a more definitive course yesterday afternoon when he tweeted, "We leave the door open for advertising. We'd like to keep our options open, as we've said before." Then, Twitter altered its terms of service, which now reads:

The services may include advertisements, which may be targeted to the content or information on the services, queries made through the services, or other information. The types and extent of advertising by Twitter on the services are subject to change."

In consideration for Twitter granting you access to and use of the services, you agree that Twitter and its third-party providers and partners may place such advertising on the services....

One can hardly be surprised, of course, for the two-year old site's growing like gangbusters and has even, like Google before it, created an entirely new verb.

But, as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch fame points out, it's not always wise for a unique company such as Twitter to open the revenue flood gates, for poor performance can drive down the ultimate value:

...The problem is, once you have revenues it's impossible for [potential buyers] to just make stuff up. They look at those revenues and growth rates and trend out from there. They can't add a different long term growth rate without a solid reason to do it

So when Twitter talks about turning on revenue, it isn't such a small decision. They have no idea how much money they can make off the service....

It's not inconceivable that Twitter actually can't scale as a centralized service, and will stumble badly.

Others wonder whether companies will want to advertise on a site where people can express themselves in a manner, however lewd and crude, of their own choosing. Does Wal-Mart really want to be advertising alongside Courtney Love's insane ramblings? Probably not.

One big concern we would have, if we were Twitter, is how much staying power the site actually has (although the influx of sluts does bode well). One reader recently compared Twitter with CB radio. It is, they hypothesized, nothing but a fad. And that's entirely imaginable.

It's hard to say how long the world will tolerate communicating within the constraints of 140 characters. Although, with the way things are going now, we'll probably all be grunting and scratching ourselves, rather than actually conversing. So, Twitter, maybe you'll surprise us.

About as well as any other scenario in which Silicon Valley geeks attempt to play tastemakers, which is to say, wretchedly. The company's co-founders, Web nerds Evan Williams and Biz Stone, have implicitly conceded as much, announcing plans to recommend feeds on a new basis: the tastes of other users who live nearby, or who have similar interests. What, middle America isn't going nuts Twitter-pimped content from Dell Outlet, Guardian Tech or geek-friendly bloggers like Veronica Belmont and Pete Cashmore? Who would have thunk it!

(Pic: Stone, by Joi Ito)

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone was Twittering on his Mexico vacation, and not in the happy, microblogging sense.

David Corn of Mother Jones picked up the scent of weakness in the White House press office.

The Chicago Tribune's Rex Huppke is not afraid to deny you entrance to his mom's basement.

Elsewhere in the Windy City, the Tribune's Mo Ryan fled in terror from Oprah's actual physical army.

Scott Kleinberg of the Chicago RedEye tried to Twitter-bait Marriott's customer service people.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Stone told Tavis Smiley last night about an early trial of his microblogging service. It made him laugh: While co-founder Evan Williams was sipping Pinot Noir and getting a massage in wine country, Stone and his wife were finding awful things under the carpet and cursing their purchase of the William Wurster-designed two bedroom — the same two bedroom they're now trying to sell. It's a funny story, but perhaps not the best way to move property in a down market.

Hopefully for Twitter's investors, Stone will take a more straightforward approach to marketing his unprofitable website; below, he confirms to Smiley that Twitter wants to accelerate revenue growth by the end of this year, as indicated in the February business plan leaked to TechCrunch by a hacker, and describes some ways that might happen, including analytics for small businesses and verified Twitter accounts.

Wall Street Journal editor Alan Murray hilariously lampooned the state of mainstream business journalism in a pithy tweet that married weak sourcing with a ridiculous and sensational headline. Ah, the joys of satire.

New-media commentator Reed Kavner was taught a lesson at the gym, presumably having to do with determination rather than pity.

After the long-anticipated firing of NBC's Ben Silverman, even straight-laced Brian Stelter at the New York Times couldn't resist a dash of snark.

TechCrunch's Sarah Lacy explains just how rich the Zappos founders are, and figures "wealth managers" are reading her pronouncements. Yes, and still waiting for her past predictions to pan out.

The question isn't why Twitter's Biz Stone misspelled an abbreviation for "oxygen," but why he was typing it in the first place. Likely answer: His burning hatred of the English language and its lengthy glory.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Asked about a possible lawsuit against TechCrunch at a Fortune event, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wouldn't rule it out:

"I don't know," he said. "I don't want to comment too much on any ongoing investigation type stuff."

Given the ample legal precedents for Arrington's actions, one would have thought Twitter executives would have surrendered the possibility of suing the publication in the 10 days since TechCrunch first published hacked documents, in full consultation with Twitter.

If the aggrieved microblogging startup is going to try and set a new legal precedent, perhaps that for the best; a legal victory for Arrington would serve as a lesson to his critics, if nothing else.

(Pic: Biz Stone, by HubSpot)

Just look at it: The two-bedroom cottage lists at less than $600,000, making it practically a shack by the standards of the Bay Area tech elite, who can easily pay seven figures for a basic, single-family home in their favored neighborhoods. Sure, it was designed by modernist architect William Wurster, but where is a tech mogul going to park his helicopter?

Living in such a small place may have been a necessary sacrifice when Stone, a sometime writer, was churning out such literary achievements as "Who Let the Blogs Out?" and "Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content," works in which he earned the right to call this a "poet's cottage."

But now that Stone has empowered the world to write beautiful poetry, 140 characters at a time, it's time to move on. Aspiring artists/blog tool makers now have their chance to snatch up Stone's tidy home base:

[via SF Weekly]

(Pics via property listing)

Twitter allows its users to mark some tweets they find particularly amusing, insightful, witty, informative, or whatever as "favorites." Rifling through the founders' favorites is a pretty good way to get a sense of what they think Twitter is good for: crude jokes and narcissistic status updates. The below tweets are culled from the Favorites lists of co-founders Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey. Dorsey is the one who faved the frat-boy-ish Calacanis item.

Ideally, from a business standpoint, Twitter executives would be highlighting innovative uses of the service — from hard news to customer support to more creative forms of tweeting — if only to help spread it to more users.

As Stone told the Wall Street Journal today, "we need to make Twitter the product more relevant to more people." Hopefully they'll highlight some ways to do that tonight at D. Because the founders are not always the best at doing so with their own tools.

The show's creator is Amy Ephron, novelist/screenwriter/sister of Nora, and is being produced by Reveille and Brillstein Entertainment Partners, in conjunction with Twitter co-founders Evan Willams and Biz Stone, of course.

The producers call their proposed series the first to bring the immediacy of Twitter to the TV screen.

''Twitter is transforming the way people communicate, especially celebrities and their fans,'' said Reveille managing director Howard T. Owens, who expects the new project to ''unlock Twitter's potential on TV.''

No further details were made available on the show's format or when it might hit the air.

Based on the vague details about the show to emerge so far, this already stale slice of American television crapcake sort of sounds like it's intended to be an Amazing Race meets Celebrity Apprentice meets, dare we say it, Gawker Stalker, style reality show. Let's just imagine for a moment MC Hammer tweeting about sitting in a booth at a Denny's in Knoxville, Tennessee with Ashton Kutcher, which would then spur Twitter users/show competitors to race to get there before both of them can polish off their Grand Slam Breakfast plates and win a $1000. Wow, that's television gold baby!

We'd like to offer congrats to Williams and Stone, who, in a desperately misguided effort to monetize their product, just managed to brutally slay their darling in spectacular fashion. The end is nigh fellas. You guys should put in a call to Henry Winkler's people so you can place him on a surf board off the coast of South Africa in the pilot episode, just to get it over and done with.

Web Service Twitter Proposes TV Competition Series [New York Times]

After a lot of ruckus last week about Google or Microsoft buying Twitter (they're not — yet), Twitter investor Fred Wilson came forward to say that the company wants partnerships, not a payday. And he invents a new metric: "tweet views," or the number of times someone sees a message posted on Twitter, whether it's on the Twitter website, a cell phone, Facebook, or the countless number of Twitter apps people use to read and write tweets.

What does a tweet view profit Twitter? Nothing. In making up "tweet views," Wilson is returning to a practice of the late-1990s dotcom boom: imaginary measurements for fictitious businesses.

Why blame him? Anything which can be measured can be managed. And people's expectations for Twitter — A $500 million Facebook acquisition! No, make that $1 billion from Google! — are utterly unmanageable. Twitter has next to no revenues, and no plan for making money. Pressed on this issue, Williams and his cofounder Biz Stone say that they're watching how people use the service and will come up with something based on that. Translation: They're making it up as they go along.

It's far better for Twitter to be valued based on people's imagination of what it might become, rather than the reality of what it is — a "poor man's email system," according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, or instant messaging 2.0. (AOL hasn't figured out how to make real money off of AIM, either.)

So what's Williams's big news tomorrow? Here's a preview: The day after tomorrow is even bigger.

Stone declared some time ago that Twitter.com would be an advertising-free zone. But as Peter Kafka points out on MediaMemo, Twitter has been running house ads for some time, promoting its search engine and other features.

ExecTweets is a directory of business executives who use Twitter to post short messages to their friends, fans, underlings, and sycophants. What did it take to put Stone in that last category? Why, just a little bit of cash, courtesy of John Battelle's Federated Media, an online advertising agency known for its controversial online campaigns which blur the line between editorial content and advertising. Battelle writes:

Twitter has a history of promoting applications and projects they think are interesting, relevant, or valuable regardless of any financial arrangement. Federated Media felt that Twitter should share some of the revenue associated with ExecTweets since this project is made possible using their open platform.

He'd have us believe, in other words, that Twitter is promoting ExecTweets not because it's getting paid but because Stone and company just love, love, love it. Right. And if you believe that, Battelle has an interesting topical experience to sell you.

New York magazine sent Will Leitch to explore the crazy phenomenon of Twitter and why it's not making any money. Cofounder Biz Stone told him worrying about money was so New York. How San Francisco!

The nonchalance Stone (left) and Twitter CEO Ev Williams (right) display about making money seems incomprehensible from elsewhere in the country. Wall Street and Detroit are supplicants in the nation's capital, dependent on billions of dollars in government largesse for their continued existence. Unemployment in the state of California is at 9.3 percent, nearly two percentage points above the national average, and the state is running out of cash.

Such is the genius of the Bay Area's startup factory: Money's not the point. The region is still awash with money, and doesn't know where to put it. One venture capital firm, Accel Partners, recently raised $1 billion in new funds. What it's short on is ideas.

And Twitter is an attractively simple idea: short bursts of text broadcast to the Internet from the Web or a cell phone, meant to update a set of friends on what the user's doing. Jack Dorsey, the engineer who came up with the notion and was Twitter's CEO until he was ousted from the job last year, Twittered two years ago, "One could change the world with one hundred and forty characters."

Twitter could be the future of news, the future of communication, the future of marketing, the future of just about anything! That's because right now, it's nothing. It has 6 million users, a pittance compared to Facebook's 150 million; Facebook's status updates duplicate Twitter's main function, and it has a real business in advertising.

But Twitter has raised $20 million in venture capital, and reportedly is raising a new round that values the company, which has $0 million in revenues, at $250 million. That is an infinite price-to-sales ratio.

In the topsy-turvy world of venture capital, that makes sense. Why? It is infinitely easier to tell stories about a company that has no revenues than one that has some revenues. Zero revenues means blue-sky possibility. Any business success charted from here on out will look like a rocket ship, up and to the right.

How dull, by contrast, to talk about a company going from $100 million in sales to $200 million. A mere doubling? Boring! During the dotcom bubble of the '90s, investors punished companies that were making money, because they assumed they weren't investing enough in growth. CNET's then-CEO Halsey Minor once noted this in 1997: "We announced that our revenues were lower, our losses were higher and our stock went up $3. The Internet is its own phenomenon."

That phenomenon now lives in Twitter, whose early investors will surely succeed in getting others to buy into their dream. Simply adorable.

(Photo by Hugh Kretschmer/New York)

About this Job

This is a unique opportunity for an ambitious, multi-talented individual who wants to see the inside of a fast-moving startup and work closely with the founders. The ideal candidate is a future entrepreneur or executive who is willing to work hard and do a wide variety of non-glamorous tasks for a year or two in order to get their foot in the door, learn, and make connections. You will work directly with Twitter CEO Evan Williams and co-founder Biz Stone with the simple goal of saving them time. Which means: The level of work you'll do is only limited by your capabilities. Are you capable of: Designing a presentation? Researching a market? Creating a financial model? Great, as long as you're also willing to make copies and run errands. Essentially, you should be overqualified to be an assistant, but not have a problem doing assistant-like tasks. In exchange, you'll get unique visibility into a unique company, a great learning experience, and the chance to move on to do many other things (in Twitter, or elsewhere—with a strong endorsement).

Requirements

Excellent written communication skills
Strong computer skills (spreadsheets, word processing, presentations, email)
Highly organized and efficient
People person with tact and diplomatic instincts
Track record of trying things
Extreme trustworthiness
Strong interest in business and, particularly, technology startups
Broad knowledge of the Internet industry

(Photo by Jason Shellen)

For example, it doesn't even allude to the company's office drama; cofounder Biz Stone subs in as spokesman for new CEO Ev Williams. It also skips over Twitter's latest privacy violation, which even affected the author of the piece.

But it does, in a roundabout way, get at the heart of Twitter's problem: The tool for posting short text updates can be useful for businesses — just not Twitter itself. Cofounder Biz Stone suggests the company may find a way to charge business customers for "premium services." A great idea. If only it had tried it a year ago, before the market crisis made such a move look desperate, rather than a bold experiment. (Photo by Getty Images)

Jason Kottke, a popular blogger, wrote about the Yearbook Yourself site on Sunday. Ev Williams, the founder of Twitter, soon adopted an Eisenhower-era look on his site, even as he complained about the trendiness of FaceYourManga. His colleague at Twitter, Biz Stone, was an early adopter of the manga look last week. A Twitter user, Vishy Venugopalan, notes that it's too late to go manga, and has followed Williams on the Yearbook trend.

This is fashion, of course, nothing more and nothing less. Countless startups have sprung up around the idea of blinging your "avatar," the fancy word entrepreneurs like to use for one's online depiction of self. But no one seems to be making money off this trend. Yearbook Yourself, improbably, was offered up by a chain of shopping centers, which advertises some of the apparel chains in its malls on the site. FaceYourManga only says that it is "property of Pixelheads," which appears to be some kind of Web design operation.

The profile-pic generator is nothing new. A Simpsons avatar generator was popular last year. Nintendo's Wii uses "Mii" avatars, whose manga-lite stylings became popular even off the videogame console. But the two new sites show that demand is spreading. There may not be a market in this, but there is a mania.

What we lose is any sense of who we're dealing with online. Unreal avatars serve to further the breakdown of online manners, and personal boundaries. It's easier to flirt with, or insult, a manga character or a black-and-white Photoshop job than a real person. Of course, our online friends never really were our friends, were they? Look at them: They're just funny pictures, acquaintances as trading cards. Collect them all.

(Profile pics by ev, biz, caroline, and midtownninja)

1. Robert Scoble
2. Michael Arrington
3. Jack Dorsey
4. Biz Stone
5. Matt Cutts
6. Pete Cashmore
7. Dave Winer
8. Guy Kawasaki
9. Loïc Le Meur
10. Kevin Rose
11. Merlin Mann
12. Stowe Boyd
13. Jeff Atwood
14. Jeremiah Owyang
15. Veronica Belmont
16. Kara Swisher
17. Scott Beale
18. Marc Andreessen
19. Ryan Block
20. David Sifry
21. Emily Chang
22. Om Malik
23. Timothy Ferriss
24. Nick Douglas
25. John Battelle
26. David Cohn
27. Louis Gray
28. Tom Foremski
29. Tim O'Reilly
30. Ariel Waldman
31. Matt Mullenweg
32. Dean Takahashi
33. Philip Kaplan
34. JD Lasica
35. Sarah Lacy
36. Brian Solis
37. Charlene Li
38. Rafe Needleman
39. Dan Farber
40. Howard Rheingold
41. David McClure
42. Margaret Mason
43. Jason Goldman
44. Leah Culver
45. Chris Shipley
46. Jackson West
47. Liz Gannes
48. Owen Thomas
49. Adeo Ressi
50. Max Levchin

(Photo from Michael Arrington)