1. DO appear on Twitter as a real person. Be like comcastcares, not Wachovia.
2. DON'T let your PR firm do the tweeting. A customer-facing employee like comcastcares is best.
3. Who to follow:
   DO follow people who follow your company's account.
   DO follow people who tweet about the company more than once.
   DO follow people who talk about the company's space.
4. DO reply to people who direct-message you. Be engaged and responsive. Be personable. There's nothing worse than sending someone a direct message on Twitter ... and hearing nothing back.

I managed to snap this one pics-or-it-didn't-happen piece of photographic evidence. It proves that good times were had by yours truly and Eric Eldon of VentureBeat. After that, I put down my now-useless, superhigh-tech, amazingly unusable Sony camera, which if I haven't mentioned it, was lent to me by my good friend Brian Lam, gadget expert. I look prettier with a lemon drop in my hand than a camera anyway. Flickr photo sluts Terry Chay and Jeremy Pepper were also there, so you can check their streams for more.

Oh, and confidential to Caroline McCarthy of News.com: You were missed. And much discussed. No, we're not telling you what was said about you. Hope you enjoyed those Mission margaritas, babe, but let me tell you, nothing's sweeter than Valen's cocktails, and nothing's more bitterly delicious than North Beach gossip.

Did I mention that Brian Lam, my good friend, was a gadget expert? And that he lent me a camera?

A concerned reader noticed, leafing through Wired Magazine, that one of the role-playing terrorists in a story on military training camps resembled a local Valley PR figure. Could outspoken blogger Jeremy Pepper be an Iraqi collaborationist?

The evidence seemed damning. Pepper is known for popping up suddenly at gatherings full of self-important Valley figures with a backpack similar to the one the man above sports.

But Pepper's defense comes in the form of a recent self-portrait. Like any good Valley geek, and unlike his lookalike, Pepper never shows up without his iPod headphones securely in place.

The only terror this man's spreading is the tinny leaked sound of his Black Eyed Peas mp3s.

Baghdad, USA [Wired]
Pop! PR Jots [Pepper's blog]

The Weber Shandwick takeover of Valleywag continues with WS legal practice guru Lucas Mast's report on this week's Third Thursday. In this edition of the PR and marketing talk series, PR blogger Jeremy Pepper MC'd a panel of corporate-blogging masters. If you're feeling cynical this morning, just read Lucas's three bullets and be done with it. We'll see if our boy Lucas can learn to stop paying attention to the actual talks and give us the nitty gritty, like whether someone got Steve Rubel drunk. In the meantime, Mr. Bright and Sunny pimps Third Thursday.

PR and tech folks who chose to skip Third Thursday to watch the Will & Grace finale live missed a rare chance to quiz a trio of corporate PR vets who have launched blogs at their Silicon Valley companies. Some helpful hints in launching corporate blogs:

1. Lock your HR in a closet
2. Blindfold and tie up your Legal
3. Spell-check and edit C-level postings

OK, so the crowd that got insights from Cisco's Jeanette Gibson, Ingres' Cynthia Schott, and Net App's Jodi Bauman [pictured] did not hear any of the abovementioned advice. They DID get some very useful tips based on the trials and tribulations faced in launching their respective blogs including having a clear policy for employees blogging (whether endorsed by the company or not), encouraging frequent posting, working as needed with Legal to ensure that problems do not arise, figuring out ways to measure traffic and impact of the blog(s) and scaling blogs as appropriate within your company.

All in all, a great night of drinking, networking, and sharing ideas for successful a successful blog launch from those in the know. Great job Pepper and Co.

Check out Cisco's High Tech Policy Blog, Ingres CTO Dave Dargo's blog and Net App founder Dave Hitz's blog for the fruits of the speakers' labors.

Earlier Third Thursday: Guest story: TechCrunch says "Wired's gonna be my bitch" [Valleywag]

Just thought you might like an advance sneak peek at the t-shirts that were distributed at a blogger happy hour last night (StormHoek was served, natch) to be worn today at The Syndicate Conference. Which I guess makes this impending event a Blogmob.

For the remedial class, Pepper and Rubel are more likely to end up together in a boxing ring than on a T-shirt. Extra-credit assignment: make a Venn diagram of the name "Rubel" and the word "wrong" appearing on Jeremy's blog.

Valleywag: Jeremy, first off, how's the role as a PR hottie going?
Jeremy Pepper:Well, not as well as I thought it would be. One person mentioned the contest to me - another guy - who then complimented me on the shirt. Maybe I should play it up on Consumating...
Wag: So about this interview. You told Danny that there's a "core group of like minded PR bloggers." Do you mean the group that ripped him apart last week?
Jeremy: LOL. Somewhat. I was talking more about how a group of us aren't out here to self promote, but to push forward the industry. We all fail together, just like we'll all succeed together.
Wag: Really? Isn't there some PR blogger out there that when they die, they die alone?
Jeremy: Isn't there some saying that we come in to the world alone, and we die alone? We all live and die by the written word, and well, embargoes. :)
Wag: I think that's from Donny Darko.

After the jump, Jeremy makes good for a 200-page fax.

Wag: You said later, "Pink is the new black." What about Pinko?
Jeremy: Well, pink is the new black is just a fashion thing. Pinko? Never been a fan of the nouveau communist mentality, whether it's manifestos, Che t-shirts (except for pure irony), or other terms from that era. Too tied to pogroms for me.
Wag: Have you ever been the whipping boy for a PR pile-on?
Jeremy: Anyone that is in the industry has been. Perfect example - fax machine went nuts (back when we faxed releases) and it ended up sending 200 blank pages to one fax machine. I sent them an apology, and a ream of paper. They loved it, so whipping to genius in one FedEx box.

¬ PR bloggers Steve Rubel (East Coast) and Jeremy Pepper (West Coast) teamed up to to form PR PR.
¬ Big sister Deathhacker battled the Z-words.
¬ Future AOL CEO Jason Calacanis ("We're also annoucing that we're buying Gawker Media") and Microsoft evangelist Robert Scoble ("the free food rocks for a fat guy like me!") joined the Plex.
¬ Google blogger Matt Cutts and Yahoo blogger Jeremy Zawodny swapped Kool-Aid.
¬ Yahoo bought Web 2.0.
¬ Three Frenchmen wished Apple a happy 30th. I blame the wine.