When someone supposedly dies on Twitter, there are nothing but questions that aren't "Is this person actually dead?" Because who gives a shit if they're actually dead. There are issues here:

Do people actually trust Twitter?
Who do they trust?
Why? It's just someone with a Twitter.

But they do! And sometimes, that information is valid, and all it takes is one Tweet for Twitter to be the needle in a haystack screaming to be found. But Twitter, like the people who use it, is weird.

Which would explain part of the answer to the question, What do Kanye West, Lil' Wayne, Rick Astley, Britney Spears, Harrison Ford, Jeff Goldblum, Miley Cyrus have in common with Morrissey? They've all been "killed" by Twitter. But not the other questions they present:

Who starts the _____ is dead rumors? Anyone and everyone! It can be some high school junior, or, as is this case, the New York Times The Moment blog, trying to crowdsource information. If you suggest someone who isn't dead may be dead, you've started a ____ Is Dead meme.

Why did they start the _____ Is Dead memes? For all kinds of reasons! Said high school junior who, bored and stoned in his US Government Honors class, decides that John Bolton, who has a funny mustache, is dead. He can then raise his hand and start a discussion about John Bolton being dead! Or maybe someone hears something and decides that they need to know more, because they actually care about this person's impact in their lives (as is, possibly, the case with Moz and The Moment). But mostly, the impulse to declare someone dead who isn't has to come from a place of mischief. Having to explain that you're not dead, you're just waiting to be seated at Pastis, could be a serious inconvenience for you and your publicist. Or if you're not a publicist or don't have one, a "normal" person who has to go out of their way to call their parents and explain that the stress they just went through was for naught.

What would be considered a "successful" ______ is dead meme?

A+: Getting a mainstream media outlet to report on the death, or rumors of the death. Newspapers, newspaper's websites, breaking news websites or Twitter accounts (like Drudge or BNO), CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, etc. If you can get someone to say something on the air about someone who's dead that isn't dead, without it being a denial, you've done an awesome job.

B+ to B: A personal denial. Get someone to admit that they're not dead through someone who isn't their publicist, either because their publicist's credibility was called into question, or because they weren't picking up the phone when they should've.

B-: A publicist denial. Fucking up a publicist's day isn't nearly as mischievous as fucking up Miley Cyrus' day, but still equally satisfying.

C+ to C-: High-profile news-denial. If a news outlet has to report and quell the rumor, at least you got it out there to the right people.

D+ to D: High-profile gossip denial. These people sort out death rumors professionally, and if yours is smart or obscure enough to make their job tough, decent, but otherwise, you're throwing them something slow and down the middle.

D- Subversive gossip and or news crowdsourcinng for an answer (see above, also, here), but add one grade notch for every 50,000 viewers they get a day.

F: You get re-tweeted a few times. That's it.

So, how do you do it correctly?

1. Pick your target correctly. Find an obscure figure who isn't exactly "popular" amongst Twitter's celebrities. Make sure they're not on Twitter, or Twittering when you put the rumor out there. This would be an example of a "Twitter Death Meme Fail":

They can't Twitter their reaction, and they can't have people with them who could Twitter a denial. A really great pick is someone who you didn't even know was still alive. Marian Seldes would be decent, so would Kathleen Turner, because then, you can get a bunch of insane Broadway gays to start freaking out and asking questions. Which brings us to the second step:

2. Find someone to help corroborate your story. Make sure to find someone with decent cred and mix of followers with mixed interests.

You need someone to breathe on the burning embers to get a flame, right?

3. Stay silent. Don't say anything else, especially when people ask you where you heard that. Tip off a few gossip blogs, or blogs that are in the periphery of gossip and/or news blogs.

4. Wait. Teach a man to fish, he'll be set for life. But teach a man to fish without telling him that screaming "BE CAUGHT, YOU FUCKING FISH" won't help, and he's screwed. Stay calm. Wait for this thing to erupt. Once you've put it out there, unless you have multiple accounts with lots of followers to help corroborate your own story, all you can do is see what happens. You've set a line out there, enjoy the natural course it's going to take. Maybe go for a walk, work out, play with your dog. Enjoy the time you have before you get back to your computer to find out from P-Nasty himself that one of the Baldwin brothers had an aneurysm while grilling tandoori chicken skewers.

5. Celebrate correctly. Twitter provides for all. Once you've successfully "killed" someone via Twitter, you should respect and honor their not-dead-ness with a seance. A Twitter seance. Or, a Tweance.

And there you go! How to kill someone with Twitter, correctly. Now, go out there, and get your death fetish on. And please report back to us with your best results.

Oh, and by the way: Morrissey isn't dead. We think. Nice work.

Of course, 24/7 Wall Street has the advantage of being able to conjure made-up estimates out of thin air; that's how the site put a price tag on various blog networks back in February (PerezHilton.com: $32 million (ha); Gawker Media: $170 million (HA!)). Now the site's taken those made-up estimates and combined them with additional made-up estimates of how much each blog network would be worth without its iconic founder. In other words, it's estimating the economic worth of each blogging boss — not to be confused with their actual wealth.

Here are the numbers. Spoiler: Drudge is king, even in hypothetical death.

(Correction: This post originally said 24/7 Wall Street was an AOL property. It is in fact independent.)

Gawker Media's Nick Denton: $26 million. Sure, that sounds like a lot, but it's only 15 percent of his company's hypothetical net worth, since Denton doesn't do much writing or editing. "Gawker would miss the guiding hand, but presumably the company could get another skilled CEO." (Pic: Eliot Shepard via mednut on Flickr)

Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington: $23 million. Huffington is the face of her company, 24/7 correctly notes, lending it valuable "star power and relationships." But the site overestimates the extent to which Huffington has delegated control to "highly skilled editorial staff:" although she's made some promising recent hires from the likes of the Washington Post, Huffington has stocked the wide-ranging site with nepotistic hires willing to abide her detailed (headlines, story placement, story assignments) and wide-ranging orders. As such, she's probably at least twice as essential to the organization as 24/7 estimates (25 percent of HuffPo's $90 million net worth). (Pic: JD Lasica)

Drudge Report's Matt Drudge: $43 million. That's 90 percent of his site's estimated $48 million value. Sure, Drudge has in the past received help from swell guys like Andrew Breitbart (no longer working for him), but they hardly had the skill to open email messages containing Republican talking points and newsroom leaks: "Drudge obviously has editors working for him to gather the hundreds of links from other media but the scoops that run on the sites are almost certainly his."

PerezHilton.com's Mario "Perez Hilton" Lavandeira: $30 million. The jizz-doodling celebrity gossip blogger is obviously an irreplaceable genius i 24/7's eyes: Without him, says the website, "the $32 million value of PerezHilton.com would go to under $2 million." Right, except for the fact that Lavandeira's got his sister and probably others actually writing/doodling the damned thing on his behalf. And since 1> Perez Hilton isn't anyone's real name to begin with and 2> his sister doesn't go around calling people "fags" like Lavandeira does, she might actually be able to make the site more popular.

TechCrunch's Mike Arrington: $12.5 million. Sure, TechCrunch's flagship tech business blog has "more than 20 senior writers, editor and business staff," but Arrington is "a controversial and polarizing figure," so he's worth half the company's total imaginary valuation of $50 million. (Pic: Robert Scoble)

The rest: MacRumors' Arnold Kim, a onetime doctor is estimated worth $4.2 million to his $21 million site; GigaOm's Om Malik accounts for $2.9 million of his tech blog network's $9.5 million value; Mashable's Pete Cashmore is estimated worth $1.25 million, or half of his tech blog's $2.5 million value; Business Insider's Henry Blodget $1.5 million or two-thirds of the total value of his financial blogging company; Markos Moulitsas (pictured) $1.7 million of political blog Daily Kos' $2 million made-up value. (Pic: Steve Rhodes)

Alternate headline: T-Mobile's Sidekick Service FAIL Outage Affects Thousands Of...Sidekick Users. Because, honestly, who uses these things? Sidekick owners, that's who!

Our tipster exhaustively writes in:

There is a media blackout on this!! Microsoft bought danger, then fired a bunch of those folks. I don't know if it's related but we (every sidekick data user in the country) has been without our internet, IM, mms, facebook and twitter. T-mobile is a trending topic on twitter because of this!

T-moible keeps saying it'll be fixed "soon" But this is day 3!! Help spread the word! we are desperate! You can't just buy a company and forget about legacy customers. If this were the iPhone, there'd be bodies in the streets.

I don't think it's a "media blackout" issue so much as it is a "people still use Sidekicks?" issue, but sure! "Sidekick shit" and "Sidekick fuck" turned up a bunch of awesome results on Twitter. Biz Stone, be proud. Another landmark for you:

BRO. BRO. I TOTALLY FEEL UR PAIN. It absolutely sucks that T-Mobile duped you for three days of service, and that they didn't really give you much of an update until today.

T-Mobile and Danger/Microsoft continue to urgently work to restore impacted services to Sidekick, and deliver them to our customers as quickly as possible. Following is a status update for our valued customers: Web browsing was restored Saturday afternoon, and the teams have been working through the night since the disruption started to enable additional functions such as IM, social networking applications and email as quickly as possible.

While we anticipate a significant portion of data services to be restored by Monday, some richer data services may lag. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, and appreciate your patience as we work hard with Danger/Microsoft to resolve this issue. We will continue to keep you updated as we have news to share. Thank you.

Heh. CAN HAZ UR MYSPACE BACK SIDEKICK USURS. Of course, T-Mobile's favorite user is throwing a bitchfit:

George Gombossy, look out. Nice of you to be a consumer advocate and all, Perez, but a bunch of people are already going to be laid off at T-Mobile due to their impending merger with Orange, and you know, the economy's tough. It's not their fault your Sidekick isn't working! It's corporate's! The stock goes down, and those people have an even worse chance of being employed. Think of the kids, Mario.

Perez Hilton: making the world shittier since always. Also: who has a Sidekick? Seriously.

Podcaster Jeff Smith was not nearly as pleased with the autumn wear in Chicago as The Awl's Choire Sicha was with the pullovers in New York.

There must be very few people who blogger Perez Hilton feels comfortable lecturing about ethics. Apparently Kim Kardashian is one of them.

Larry David as a no-doubt carefully calibrated caricature of himself is pure Twitter bait, and celeb-news editor Bonnie Fuller wasn't ashamed to bite the hook.

Irin Carmon of Women's Wear Daily found some feature fodder for the New York Times Magazine. No charge.

Brian Stelter is back from Philly so... what are you waiting for? Get back to work, Twitter followers!

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

Demi says he pushes kiddie porn. Perez says she's a bad mother and he's gonna sue her. All the fuss is over some pictures that Perez linked to some pictures on his Twitter account of Tallulah Willis (also daughter of actor, Bruce) partying in a very revealing blouse. If you really need to see it, it's here.

Demi opened with a salvo that failed to explain just what her 15-year-old daughter was doing at a Cobrasnake-documented party in the first place:

Clearly Perez Hilton isn't taking violating child pornography laws very seriously. He might not but there are alot of people who do!...Anyone who advertises follows or supports Perez supports violating child pornography laws!...Let me ask all of you, what is it called when someone is telling people to look and focus on a child's "boobs & ass" while providing photos?

Perez responded by taking the moral highground, a dubious tactic for a fellow who made a name for himself by drawing cum on celebrity pictures:

And thanks for drawing MORE attention to your daughter's behavior and your parenting skills (or lack thereof). U r real smart!...Still waiting for you to retract your incorrect, libelous and defamatory statements...I would not let my 15 year old daughter dress like that under ANY context. You are delusional and slightly senile!

Yes, it was in bad taste to post them, Perez, but it's hard to take Demi's sanctimonious claims seriously (her last tweet reads, "This is not a game . Children should not be exploited. They must be protected.") when she allowed her daughter to go to the party in the first place. And Perez just keeps baiting her. Even moral compass Heidi Montag has weighed in! So, why don't you two put down the smart phones, pick up some common sense, and give it a rest. You're making Tallulah look like the sane one here!

CocoPerez.com has been exposed in dribs and drabs; the website Evil Beet snuck past its password protection, then the website became freely available for maybe half an hour, now it's back to being password protected.

The site is meant to be more advertiser-friendly, and consequently finds Hilton doodling fewer crude captions on pictures. But his nasty side shows through sometimes, as in this caption:

Then there's this sarcastic headline, complete with Hilton's trademark double exclamation points:

But there's also analytical rigor! Evil Beet noticed that Hilton has been reposting items written for his old site, expanded with more "analysis." Below is a post about Harvard University's obnoxious new clothing line. On PerezHilton.com, the coverage ended with, "This is all fine and well, but there is one lingering question… why???" On CocoPerez.com, it ends,

This is all fine and well, but there is one lingering question: why?? This is from so far left field. We would understand if The New School or RISD or any number of artistic/fashion focused schools launched a line - it would still be unusual but at least a logical progression. But this?? This is just so random. Especially since Harvard isn't exactly thought of as the apex of fashion. This is like Janet Reno announcing she's launching a line of lingerie. You just can't get your head around it because it's so…bizarre.

Well, at least they've got our attention!

It is for this value-added piercing insight that the new site is apparently sponsored by Gap. We'd be surprised if many more sugar daddies sign on: Hilton's biggest advantage has been that he'll say anything, no matter how tasteless. But now he wants to make bank by playing nice, leading to muddles like CocoPerez.

Susan Orlean is what you might call an extremely high-maintenance writer. Even by New Yorker standards.

Another day on Twitter means another uncomfortable revelation, for Perez Hilton.

Technologizer's Harry McCracken got sort of Zen about losing all his work. Except for the theism.

Politico's Ari Melber is way, way too busy to watch himself on national television, so he lives it to his many fans on Twitter.

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein got tired of hearing himself talk, to say nothing of the person he was interviewing.

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

Why is Hilton, real name Mario Lavandeira, so eager to trade his cock drawings for product placement? Perhaps because of the purported success of Microsoft's Wonderwall, a mostly toothless collection of pretty celebrity pictures that is browsed by scrolling sideways. A buzzy article in the New York Times touted Wonderwall's traffic and blue-chip advertisers and positioned it as a tame antidote to Hilton.

So Perez is trying to go blue-chip? That's almost unfathomable; the blogger's greatest asset remains his low-rent bitchiness and vulgarity. The only question is whether he figures that out before or after a fruitless effort to out-slick and out-friendly Microsoft. It, will, at least, be comical to watch.

MC Hammer sent a tweet from his pocket, which we tried not to think too much about.

Kirstie Alley and Perez Hilton had the most unholy sort of flirtation.

MacWorld's Jason Snell delivered a lesson for writers in four parts.

Ryan Seacrest was secure enough to show a little emotion.

Tech pundit Andy Ihantko discovered the secret, slightly masochistic reason the Twitterati love free WiFi.

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

Hilton says in the attached Time video that he works alone, with only "a little bit" of help from his sister. But when Guanabee ran 24 of the gossip blogger's recent photo scrawls past a handwriting expert, three of them looked like they were written by someone else.

Writes Cindy Casares:

We've had people come forward to tell us exclusively that they ghostwrote for Perez Hilton as far back as 2006.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.>So don't be fooled. You might like to think all of Hilton's erudite posts are written by the dashing young man who sounds so erudite on your television. But really they're probably just done by some sweaty, hyperventilating loudmouth whose mom still cleans up after him.

[Guanabee]

Lavandeira has won a case against PerezRevenge, a gossip site which styles itself as an antidote to Hilton's "meanness." U.S. District Court Judge Gary Feess has ordered the blog's owners, Margie Rogers and Elizabeth Silver-Fagan, to stop using the PerezRevenge name, turn over the site to Hilton, and desist from "using the term 'Perez' to designate any platform, medium, and/or website that contains entertainment or celebrity news or gossip."

Which is laughable, when you think about how Hilton got his start. He first blogged on a site called PageSixSixSix, until he got a nastygram from the New York Post, which objected to his free-riding on the name of its famous gossip column. Lavandeira then came up with his play on the name of the famous hotel heiress, and became Perez Hilton. He also routinely doctors celebrity photos, arguing that sprinkling cocaine dots on them is a transformative use, entitling him to publish them. A couple years ago, several photo agencies disagreed and slapped him with lawsuits. Still, it's all fun and fair. It seems like he's just upset that someone else has joined in on the game.

But who can be expected to do a good job as a one-man show in the swiftly professionalizing business of pretending to be an amateur? Even the gossips aren't doing the gossiping themselves. Even Perez Hilton is too busy hobnobbing with the people he ostensibly writes about to personally deface their photos anymore. It's understandable. Being yourself online is a full-time job. Ideally, for someone else.

The notion that blogs and Twitter will replace gossip has been around for a while. What's left for the tabloids if the stars reveal everything themselves? The gossip rags ought to fade away as celebrities interact with fans directly, and tell their stories their own way. Or so goes the webheads' theory.

But as Hollywood actors and musicians adopt Twitter en masse, the theory's getting a real-time test — and proving wanting. It turns out that media gatekeepers were really saving celebrities from themselves. As anyone who's written a magazine profile knows, what editors and readers want is an appealing, well-told story — not a numbing stream of trivia. And that means discarding far more material than one can ever use.

Facebook, Twitter blogs, and other media of the moment are a repository for that cutting-room floor — the ephemeral discards of mostly mundane lives. One man's trash is sometimes another man's treasure. But more often, it's just trash.

"It's inherently silly and it's inherently dumb," John Mayer, the musician and former Jennifer Aniston paramour told E! last week. Wise of Mayer to figure this out, though a bit late, since his Twitter addiction reportedly spurred his most recent breakup with Aniston. Mayer's smart enough to realize that Twitter is making him look like a fool to loved ones and strangers alike — but not smart enough to stop using it.

Courtney Love, meanwhile, is getting sued by a designer, Dawn Simorangkir, whose wares she once fancied, over ranting comments the professional Kurt Cobain widow left on MySpace and Twitter. Love has never been known for her self-control: Witness her unprovoked '90s-era rant about cheese, unleashed on an unsuspecting zine editor. But media which enable her to talk unfiltered 24/7 give us all too much insight into an obviously unbalanced mind.

Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton likewise have done themselves no favors in their blogging habits. Far from correcting their louche reputations, their overshares have cemented it.

Then there's the notion that fans would just sit back and receive all this information without comment. Jamie Spears, Britney's dad, is suing BreatheHeavy.com, a Britney Spears fan site, for allegedly invading his daughter's privacy. "I will destroy your ass!" Jamie Spears reportedly told BreatheHeavy webmaster Jordan Miller. (In fact, Jamie Spears may be mad about BreatheHeavy's aggressive questioning of the conservatorship arrangement under which he controls his daughter's finances.)

What's the solution? These people all need professional help. But since they're unlikely to spend the time they need on the psychiatrist's couch, they'll doubtless end up hiring assistants adept in social media. Ghostwritten Twitters are the hot new Hollywood must-have.

Every tweet will be media-coached. Every blog will be relentlessly edited — and then have typos inserted for authenticity. (Is that why someone pretending to be Rachael Ray consistently misspelled the cooking-show personality's name on a Yahoo blog?) The kids who are pretending to be celebrities on Twitter today will no doubt get paid to do it in the future.

Hilariously incompetent flack Jonathan Jaxson, who recently settled his legal spat with client Kim Zolciak of real Housewives of Atlanta, seems to be a pioneer here — in the sense that all pioneers get arrows in their back.

(Photo of Mayer by Getty Images; Spears by X17 Online)

Not that we blame Berners-Lee for these things ... okay, okay, we do. The 20 worst things about the World Wide Web:

• 1. Julia Allison
• 2. Twitter
• 3. Jason Calacanis
• 4. Wikipedia
• 5. Henry Blodget
• 6. Dave Winer
• 7. Blogs
• 8. Dead newspapers everywhere
• 9. Congressman Jared Polis
• 10. Robert Scoble
• 11. The Pets.com sock puppet, and Michael Ian Black's subsequent career
• 12. Digg
• 13. Perez Hilton
• 14. /b/
• 15. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's love life
• 16. Oversharing
• 17. Mark Zuckerberg
• 18. Chris Crocker
• 19. Internet commenters
• 20. Kevin Rose

We realize they weren't in your original spec, Timbo, but you should have anticipated them. Really.

Twitter-loving food writer turned dubiously qualified Web entrepreneur Amanda Hesser dished out advice to Mediabistro founder Laurel Touby.
New York media scenestress Caroline Waxler bought something as seen on TV, and CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy bullied us into informing you.
Multimedia tech opinionator Sarah Lacy just couldn't leave the studio.
Gossip blogger Perez Hilton did, like, some reporting, kinda.
New York Times Detroit reporter Micki Maynard found a lone supporter of the domestic auto industry.

See something worth noting on Twitter? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

Because celebrities have every other possible medium in which to broadcast their feelings and opinions, from movies to television, newspapers to magazines. Why would I want to read John Cusack's opinions about why the war in Iraq is bad, when I can go see his terrible movie about it? Either way, I'm almost guaranteed not to laugh. Responding to the brouhaha over her blog, Barr at least makes me chuckle:

i do not know brangelina and do not mean to personally impugn them as they might be good people in the flesh, but the media's images of them are smelly and vile, and I must always attack the media's representation of what is good or cool, because those who inhabit the media world of glamour and entertainment and fashion and gossip are horrid people who have no talent of any kind, and yet think of themselves as tastemakers. taste my sandy buttcrack, tmz, and perez!

See, she hates the "mainstream media," but she's not boring. And after all, Barr's celebrity status was already an anomaly in Hollywood, where aging, overweight women are meant to play the cuddly matriarchs of nuclear families, not leading roles in sitcoms. Barr's Roseanne was a paean to working class America, and while too trite by half these days compared to the hard-hitting social commentary on The Wire, at the time it was unique.

So while for the most part I would suggest celebs go on their merry way to produce regular old Hollywood schlock and leave the blogging to the creative underclass, I heartily welcome Barr into the authentic blogger mold. She even has an RSS feed! Now slap some ads on that site, Roseanne, and start complaining about how little money you can earn from Google with the rest of us. (Photo by Getty/Todd Williamson)

So, are readers finally tiring of the torrent of shallow news about no-name celebrities, as Salon believes? The reasons for the abrupt decision are more prosaic, and depressing. Pagesix.com experienced its first day with more than 1m pageviews, last week, when the site published a gallery of photographs of Eliot Spitzer's hooker, Ashley Alexandra Dupré. But it was not making sufficiently rapid inroads into a market dominated by Time Warner's TMZ, and gossip blogs such as Perez Hilton. But the decision to shutter the spinoff gossip site likely owes even more to the Australian media mogul's pessimism about the US economy, and advertising spending.

Murdoch, disclosing a slowdown in ad revenue at his Fox television stations and newspapers, has predicted a "temporary downturn for a year or so." Other media companies, such as the New York Times, are also suffering from the advertising downturn, and have cut costs by making piecemeal layoffs.

The News Corporation boss, who has funded a decade of losses at his tabloid, the New York Post, is typically a patient investor. But he can also be decisive. He will be wary of overstretching the company, particularly after stretching to acquire the Wall Street Journal. During the last big advertising downturn, Murdoch nearly lost control of his company.

Anyway, before competitors gloat at News Corporation's reverse, they should remember this: if advertising spending has indeed turned down, the downturn will not spare web sites. The web's boosters hope that newly cost-conscious marketers will simply redirect their budgets from print and television to the web; that was the hope during the last recession, and it was wishful thinking, then and now. Murdoch will be embarrassed for a day; other media groups will be subsidizing loss-making websites for months before they come to the same conclusion.

1. Facebook stays independent and private, strikes a meaningful deal that legitimizes its business plan, and buys a startup.
2. Born out of the writers' strike, at least one "Funny or Die" style site gets big buzz and maybe even gets bought, but it fails to produce any videos near the quality of FoD or Super Deluxe.
3. Google releases some limited version of voice search beyond GOOG 411. During the year, the company's stock tops $800.
4. Digg sells to a major media company for at least $200 million, and founder Kevin Rose starts a non-web-based company.
5. YouTube announces it's adding HD video, but the feature doesn't arrive until 2009.
6. Gawker Media, publisher of this site, starts a men's site and a Web show.
7. Yahoo suffers major layoffs, leading the press to dub it the next AOL.
8. Yet AOL is spun off and reframes itself. At the end of 2008, the company's future is still uncertain.
9. Apple releases a second-generation iPhone, and at least one New York Times article tries to draw a "middle class/rich" line between those who upgrade and those who stick with the first generation.
10. A new videoblogger emerges as the go-to example for slick independent daily vlogging, following Amanda Congdon and Ze Frank.
11. Tumblr, the pared down blogging service, enjoys the popularity that 2007 brought Twitter.
12. Twitter remains independent and spins off a new service.
13. The Internet again fails to drive one presidential candidate to success. So does Chuck Norris.
14. Jason Calacanis, still running his online directory Mahalo, starts another project.
15. A new meme started in a geeky part of the web infiltrates the "normal" population even more deeply than LOLcats.
16. Yet another e-book reader comes out and no one cares.
17. Blog search engine Technorati collapses after failing to get enough funding to stay afloat.
18. The Wall Street Journal announces it will soon be free online.
19. Blog platform maker Six Apart, having spun off LiveJournal and rearranged its exec staff, gets bought.
20. Dell screws up the good will it won in 2007 with another customer-service or bad-parts scandal.
21. Net Neutrality takes another hit from a telco-friendly Congressional bill.
22. Second Life plods along.
23. The TechCrunch blog network lands a regular TV appearance, if not a show.
24. The country tires of the last round of famous-for-being-famous celebs, and gossip blogger Perez Hilton's TV show gets cancelled.
25. A minor medical incident renews the "can Apple survive without Steve Jobs" argument.