Both Maddow and Thiel went to Stanford. They overlapped for a couple of years in the early '90s. Thiel, who had already gotten his undergraduate degree and was enrolled in law school, had started the Stanford Review, a conservative newspaper, to campaign against the college's move away from a curriculum which favored the great works of Western literature. Maddow was a progressive activist stomping around in combat boots and a shaved head. We hear that Thiel and Maddow had some kind of noisy on-campus altercation. Through a spokeswoman, Maddow says she doesn't remember a run-in with Thiel. Any Stanford grads care to enlighten us on what the two had to say to each other?

Thiel, who has suggested America would be better off if women had never gotten the vote, now calls his views on women's suffrage a "commonplace statistical observation." We think these two school chums are overdue for a reunion. They both now live in Manhattan. Isn't it time Thiel pops over to the studio for an interview on the Rachel Maddow Show? There's so much for them to catch up on!

(Maddow photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images; Thiel by davidorban)

Internet microcelebrity Julia Allison gazed into the abyss.

Rich Barton, CEO of real-estate startup Zillow, let his iPhone app go to his head.

VH1 pop-culture commentator John Aboud sartorialized.

New Yorker writer Susan Orlean finally turned into a crazy cat lady, as we'd all kind of expected.

MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall feigned objectivity.

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

MSNBC commentator Dan Abrams inveighed against the horrors of the "mainstream media."

ABC's John Berman played Captain Phillips to his apartment's Somali-pirate rodents.

Techmeme editrix Megan McCarthy questioned California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's competence.

Web 3.0 fanboy Alan Meckler gave Twitter "big ups."

Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley mooched off of ex-employer Google again.

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

Daily Show producer Miles Kahn griped about overcharging.

Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich doubted the value of looking for work on Twitter.

MSNBC gossip Courtney Hazlett analogized.

Time media critic James Poniewozik tried to save Twitter from itself.

Talking Points Memo blogger Matt Cooper worked on his daddy issues.

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

50 Cent, né Curtis Jackson III, has hired a Web ghostwriter, Chris Romero, also known as Broadway, to post updates on the message-broadcasting service for him, the New York Times reports.

What we have here is a rapper with a stage name who relies on another guy with an extra moniker to represent his real, authentic self to fans. Is your head spinning yet?

Last week, Keith Olbermann ranted to thousands of MSNBC viewers that Twitter was the "worst person in the world" for allowing an unknown person to "perpetuate a fraud" by impersonating him on the service as "@keitholbermann." (On Twitter, users address each other with the "@" sign.)

The only problem: It turns out that an MSNBC employee had registered the account on Olbermann's behalf. Before the account's owner went private and deleted all of its updates, the @keitholbermann account seemed to be sending updates similar to the official Twitter feed for Olbermann's show, Countdown. Here's Olbermann's rant:

Then there's the curious case of Twitter's Christopher Walken, whose fake account has been disavowed by the actor — and yet is as real as it gets. The fakester's work is reminiscent of Dan Lyons's Fake Steve Jobs in its zany yet realistic insights into the inner life of a famous person. The clever impersonator, as yet anonymous, recently granted an interview to The Wrap. His explanation of his work as @cwalken:

I simply enjoy writing for voices other than my own. When I post a "cwalken" update I am hoping to write something as I would imagine it spoken by Christoper Walken. The politics, tastes and observations are my own. That is — I am not trying to speak for Christopher Walken. I am simply borrowing his voice and reworking my words in his cadence.

Some people crochet, I do this.

For some, pretending to be a celebrity on Twitter is a hobby. But for others, it's a business — like the small army of people Britney Spears employs. Until recently, Joseph Nejman was one of them. He's now dismissive of the practice:

"It's O.K. to tweet for a brand," he said, remarking how common it is for companies to have Twitter accounts, "but not O.K. for a celebrity. But the truth is, they are a brand. What they are to the public is not always what they are behind the curtain. If the manager knows that better than the star, then they should do it."

What Nejman does not mention: Spears's management operation fired him for incompetence in January, after the Harvard grad posted a clumsy help-wanted ad looking for a ghost Twitterer on his alma mater's alumni website. (In a major no-no for celebrity help-seekers, Nejman actually named Spears as the client in the ad, a move which Hollywood veterans scoffed at as likely to attract deranged fans instead of real talent.) Now that he's no longer being paid to pimp out Britney Spears on Twitter, Nejman doesn't think anyone should!

But in posing as a social-media expert instead of a fired hack, Nejman isn't doing anything worse than most people on Twitter, celebrity or not. A few are honest about their fakeness, like Technology Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin, who wrote last August of his growing Twitter fixation:

But I will never use social technologies quite as the young use them, because I do not thrill to continuous attention and I value my privacy. Thus, the Jason Pontin who occupies the social space is a constructed persona, designed to be unchallengingly personable, humorous, and thoughtful. I am none of those things very often. The preoccupations of that Jason Pontin are professional: he thinks about emerging technologies all the time. And I never broadcast the substance of my inner life, because I know it would become insubstantial the moment I did.

Wall Street Journal editor Julia Angwin likewise recently figured out the point of Twitter: It is not about living your life with friends in real time. It is about promoting your work to gullible strangers.

That's the grand irony of Twitter: Even the real people on the service are fake. They are their own simulacra. No one actually lives their life 140 characters at a time. What we do is turn ourselves into works of fiction. Who's real? Who's not? Who cares?

MSNBC's Courtney Hazlett dreamed of doing lazy Nexis searches from the beach.

Engadget blogger Nilay Patel got abused by Microsoft, instead of the other way around.

Kurt Andersen dined out in L.A.

Music journalist Touré did nothing to decrease the amount of violence in the world.

Wired's Danny Dumas overestimated the difficulty of getting mentioned in Gawker.

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

Disturbingly handsome former MSNBC chief turned media-corrupting journalist-peddler Dan Abrams got shamed into using Twitter by Rachel Sklar, then embarrassed her by doing it wrong.

Don't feel bad, Dan! Octo-mom interviewer Ann Curry also failed on her first day using Twitter. Pesky 140-character limit!

Los Angeles social-media enthusiast and KNBC personality Shira Lazar dreamt of immortality.

1600 host David Shuster did it live.

Twitter-addicted NBC cameraman Jim Long got some sweetness with his coffee.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please.

[arian1]

Microsoft can't run both because back when NBC and Microsoft formed MSNBC.com, Microsoft agreed that the venture would be the only source of news on Microsoft sites. A Microsoft-owned Yahoo News would violate that agreement. One of the two properties would have to go.

Expect Microsoft to keep Yahoo News and sell MSNBC.com to NBC Universal, which already owns 82 percent of the associated cable channel.

Insiders say NBC is eager to take over, and Microsoft should be happy to sell. MSNBC.com is more successful online than its TV counterpart is on cable, but according to ComScore, Yahoo News is more popular. Besides, Microsoft has specific reason to trust Yahoo News managment. It's run by the man many consider to have once made MSNBC.com what it is: Microsoft veteran Scott Moore, who's said to be missed in Redmond.

Find him and interview? - O.
——- Forwarded message ——-
From: Chaela Volpe
Date: Jan 7, 2008 1:35 PM
Subject: Gary Krakow joins TheStreet.com newsroom as Sr. Tech Correspondent, Reports Live from CES in Las Vegas

After a couple moments of silence, Shankman says, "This is the most surreal moment I've ever been witness to." Then, of course, he writes it up. Thanks, buddy.

By the way, Krakow has this to say about his new job:

Valleywag: Why'd you leave MSNBC?
Krakow: MSNBC wanted to go in a different direction. I needed more artistic freedom.
V: Does TheStreet still exist? Have you been paid yet?
K: Don't worry about my paycheck. The new, redesigned site will be up within a few weeks with a focus on video.

When your name's misspelled once in a piece about your now-famous ex-partner, that hurts. When it's misspelled three times? That'll leave a scar.

Internet star tries to make it on her own [MSNBC]

Can anyone explain how such a busy Internet rockstar has time for all these interviews? This week, she's talked to CNET (saying, "For this to be very public is kind of jarring"), MSNBC primetime ("As of Monday, Congdon said, she had received job offers that included "E" and every major network except CBS"), and TIME ("I've been approached for everything.") Sure must be tiring! But who will she take to the prom?

10 Questions for Amanda Congdon [TIME]