Evan Williams invented Twitter, and now he's invented the ultimate Twitter review, in which you don't even need to watch the movie in question.

Political writer Chris Lehmann got a preview screening of the post apocalypse. In line at the supermarket, naturally.

Director Kevin Smith, hopeless romantic.

Advice columnist Penelope Trunk was dreaming of a White (Lie) Hannukkah.

"No really, have another. It's deductible!"

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If you're going to wish touchy actor Kevin Pollak a happy birthday, remember to spell his last name correctly. It's as written previously, or, colloquially, "Kevin WHO?"

Actress and singer Deborah Gibson has had it with her lying workout machine. (It totally sucks when that happens.)

Your "Twitter Latte" intrigues Twitter CEO Ev Williams. So he'll either be ordering one, or suing you. Or both!

Singer Fred Durst forgot to pay his check. He apparently didn't have time to go back and pay or tip or whatever, but he had time to tweet "Oops." Uh, LOL?

Business Insider (and former Valleywag-) contributor Alaska Miller wants less predictable cable news talking heads. Like maybe a redhead!

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Step one: Slowly destroy the Suggested User List, a list of Twitter's favorite websites which is used to populate the accounts of new users. CEO Evan Williams now says ""I desperately want to kill it or evolve it," according to Business Insider. A few weeks ago, Williams said, "we don't think it's our job to editorialize" through the list, according to NYU professor Jay Rosen.

Indeed, the list gave the microblogging startup tremendous unchecked power to instantly bestow large audiences on various Twitter publishers, yet it was assembled somewhat haphazardly, in a process that involved a "gut check" with "a couple folks" at Twitter Inc. The company reportedly and apparently removed TechCrunch publisher Mike Arrington from the list after, over Twitter's loud objections, he published internal Twitter documents obtained from a hacker. TechCrunch appears to have since been restored to the list; the below chart from TwitterCount shows the long fallow period in Twitter follower growth for TechCrunch when it was apparently out of Twitter's favor:

Step two: Provide search data to rivals. The value in Twitter is in its real time "fire hose" of tweet data. But the company has guarded that data jealously, providing it to only some companies who request it, and then often at a cost of thousands of dollars per month. But Twitter is now nearing a deal to finally sell access to its "full feed" to Microsoft for the Bing search engine, reports Kara Swisher of All Things D. The company is also believed to have been in talks with Google for a similar deal. Sharing with such large competitors is quite a bit of letting go — albeit with financial compensation — for a company that has treated its real-time content feed as a major strategic asset.

It would appear that Twitter is learning a lesson crucial to all sorts of small businesses: if you want to be successful at something, you have to give up on being successful at everything. One would think a company founded on tiny, 140-character status updates would have learned the benefits of limits much sooner.

(Pic: Williams, earlier this month, by Bruno Pin.)

"We're building a modern house that we hope will be done by 2010," Williams told the Times. Instead, the couple moved into a pre-built modern Victorian earlier this year.

When news surfaced earlier this month that Williams and his wife had bought a Noe Valley home, we wrote that our best guess was that the house was an interim mansion. Why else would the couple be "selling one house, buying a second and building a third?"

After all, Williams' new Noe Valley house was finished and put on the market in October 2008, more than three months before Williams said in the Times that he was building his own house. The deed transferred to Williams this past April, according to property records, and since then there has reportedly been some interior remodeling.

Williams wrote in to tell us that he's not juggling homes: "We were building a house." No more.

We've updated our original post.

(Pic: by JD Lasica)

In an interview with Wired's Steven Levy, Williams lashed back at two traditional media fogeys who pooh-poohed his company's potential at the Sun Valley schmoozefest in July. Barry Diller, of IAC, and John Malone, the satellite TV mogul, said the microblogging service would never make much cash.

"I didn't argue my case," Williams says. "But all the Internet guys there were laughing at those media guys. Are you kidding? Do you understand how money flows to the Internet? When you know that Twitter is a vehicle for directing information and traffic to large audiences, you realize there's obviously a huge business."

And, hey, that's coming from a guy who made four whole million dollars last year, old media people, so you better listen up. These guys have spreadsheets that would blow your minds.

That, at least, is the best explanation we can come up with for why Ev and Sara Williams are selling one house, buying a second and building a third, all at the same time. Their old penthouse was a two-bedroom in a gritty part of San Francisco Mission District, while the home they just bought reportedly has three bedrooms, a guest house and is in the yuppie-family haven of Noe Valley. The acquisition, reported today by SocketSite, can be confirmed with a search on the records website PropertyShark:

The Noe property, on the market for a full year and designed by architect Owen Kennerly, seems like a sensible place to wait out the construction of the new home; a comfortable interim house like this should allow the couple to complete their own house without rushing the job in response to the pressures of a new baby, fast-growing internet startup and cramped apartment. Plus, they got it for 16 percent under list.

That, at least, is what we'd tell ourselves if we had $2.4 million to drop on a temporary pad.

UPDATE: Williams writes, ""We're not building another house. (Also, the penthouse isn't in the Mission.)" The first assertion is very odd: The Times quoted Williams in March saying "we're building a modern house;" at that point the house below had been finished and listed for sale for four months. Perhaps the project proved to overwhelming. We've asked for clarification.

UPDATE: Williams writes, "we *were* building a house."

Pictures of the house below via SocketSite.

Front.

Kitchen.

Guest house.

Though investors recently valued Twitter at $1 billion, Williams has yet to cash out. Both his old and new place were presumably funded with money and lucrative pre-IPO shares the serial entrepreneur made selling Blogger to Google.

The riches do not appear to have been invested in the penthouse's current furnishings: Either Williams or his stager seem to have ordered the entire Pier 1 catalog right up.

Whatever. A similarly blah getup did not inhibit the sale of the Berkeley home of Williams' fellow co-founder Biz Stone, which has changed hands barely two months after it went on the market.

Pics via McGuire and Curbed.

Tila Tequila's maid came an hour early and it was a HUGE imposition. It just screwed up the professional attention-getter's whole day, to say nothing of her poor little dog Onyx who has to rush through her meal outdoors like some sort of ANIMAL.

San Francisco comic Heather Gold played "freak out the neighbors" with her landlady. Cool landlady!

Twitter's Evan Williams tossed a product suggestion at his old employer. The guy does have a track record, Google, although this sounds more like an Odeo than a Blogger.com.

Online brander Damien Basile rushed out a Google Wave/tsunami joke while it was still in good taste.

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Amazingly, a San Francisco technology startup failed to give George W. Bush's henchman the recognition he felt he deserved.

Twitter's Evan Williams took his son to work, if only virtually.

Daniel Victor of the Harrisburg, Pa.'s Patriot News conducted some journalistic anthropology.

The Daily Show's Rob Corddry reported quality-control issues at the Cheesecake Factory.

Lifecaster Julia Allison needed some help to overshare, for once.

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Earlier this week, co-founder Evan Williams and his wife live-tweeted a labor, as well as the first moments of their baby son's life. Plus his naming. It was all very sweet.

Now Alex Payne, who heads up Twitter's API team, has announced the news of his engagement, and posted a picture of the ring. So did his fiancée, with the caption, "LOOK WHO'S ENGAGED, BITCHES!!"

It's all very w00t worthy, but what's with the wave of private moments from Twitter staff? When the third one hits, we're just going to come out and ask whether there's some kind of internal bonus program or something. In the meantime, we'll just congratulate them, both on their moments and their candor.

Young Brown should take a look at 37-year-old Evan Williams' biography. The Twitter co-founder worked at Google for a year and a half, witnessing first-hand how a total lack of focus — Google branched out wildly from search— is no barrier to massive profits. Then Twitter happened only because Williams was aimless enough to abandon the original startup from which it sprang, Odeo, just as he had abandoned the original plan of the company behind his last smash hit, Blogger.

Williams is the perfect embodiment of the Silicon Valley ethos that business plans are oppressive things, to be deferred as long as possible.

(Pic: Williams, by Joi Ito)

To determine why teens might not like Twitter, the Chicago Tribune's Amanda Maurer decided she'd seek out teens... on Twitter.

Craig Newmark of Craigslist would like to lose weight while playing with his iPhone. It's important to have dreams.

Twitter's Evan Williams tried out some "pretty rad" software for making bodacious tweets. The program in question is in closed beta. Bummer.

Cody Brown of NYU Local sees critiques of the newspaper industry hidden absolutely everywhere.

echo 'Point taken, Hooker!'

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TechCrunch this week published internal Twitter documents obtained by a computer hacker. Twitter wasn't thrilled, but entered talks with the influential business website.

Then, today, TechCrunch claimed it had received a "green light" from the company to publish some internal business discussions. Twitter has now vehemently disputed that, first via its CEO's Twitter stream, then on its blog, where co-founder Biz Stone (pictured) wrote, "we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared."

Several hours later, TechCrunch had not changed its posting or addressed Twitter's contradictory version of events. We called TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington to clear up the confusion, but he cryptically said he wouldn't comment on the matter for at least 24 hours. We asked if this meant no new statements would be posted to TechCrunch, and he wouldn't comment on that, either.

Twitter, meanwhile, sounds like it's rattling a saber. From Stone's blog post:

Out of context, rudimentary notes of internal discussions will be misinterpreted by current and future partners jeopardizing our business relationships. We are pursuing a path to address the harm caused by these actions and as noted yesterday, we've already reached out to the partners and individuals affected.

And so it begins. Who would have thought that blogs vs. microblogs would be one of the fiercest media wars of 2009? It's enough to make you long for a good old fashioned Google-newspaper fight.

Evan Williams doesn't want you to be worried about the intersection of his face with liquid nitrogen. He isn't! But he secretly knows it's kinda badass.

Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg had a rainy day. Cheer her up with a lipdub.

Page Six's Neel Shah spotted Ron Burkle with his hands full, as usual. No word on where his friends' hands were busy.

Peter Kafka of All Things D was hit by a clueless emission from the Washington Post.

FishbowlNY's Hunter Walker made a sacrifice play that showed how desperate Gotham journalists had become.

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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]

Kara Swisher has typed up everything she knows on the deal. The short version: Facebook offered stock, Twitter wanted cash. Facebook wanted to use last year's ridiculous $15 billion valuation for its shares. The End.

Williams always seems to know what's hot and what's not. Right now, his board is supporting his instincts: Build out Twitter's service before trying to make money from it, just as Google did for a few years. When the economy comes back, Twitter will be even bigger, and the offers even better — maybe even from Facebook.

• Wendi Deng Murdoch, MySpace China
• Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, MySpace
• Max Levchin, Slide
• Robin Li, Baidu
• Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos
• Elon Musk, SpaceX
• Ali and Hadi Partovi, iLike
• Mika Salmi, MTV
• Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh
• Quincy Smith, CBS
• Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times
• Peter Thiel, Clarium Capital
• Evan Williams, Twitter
• Andrew Zolli, PopTech