Apr 4, 2007 07:27 AM
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NICK DOUGLAS — OMG it's all the rage, I can't stop checking, I might miss something I used to dismiss as mundane! It's Twitter! And it's Justin.tv! I can't decide which is hype-ier, the one-line blogging service or the 24/7 camboy, and neither can the media both old and new. Round one, FIGHT!
Blogger fandom
Justin.tv: When does Justin not have a blogger on screen? He's hung out several times with San Francisco kingpin Scott Beale (head of the web host Laughing Squid and one of the godfathers of Burning Man), videobloggers Irina Slutsky and Eddie Codel from the show Geek Entertainment TV, and, of course, me, the world's leading expert on undeserved Internet fame (I took video). He got namechecked on Leo Laporte's popular This Week in Tech podcast. And I just joined a finely written Justin-dedicated group blog.
Twitter: Let's take a look at Twitterholic, the list of Twitter users with the most followers. The aforementioned Laporte is at the top with over 4000 fans; #3 is old-school blogger Robert Scoble, then Amber Macarthur, who worked with Laporte at Tech TV, G4 TV, and TWiT. Other famous bloggers include funnyman Merlin Mann, Weblogs. Inc. founder Jason Calacanis, Lockergnome conference founder Chris Pirillo, Blogger (and Twitter) founder Biz Stone, Daring Fireball writer John Gruber, and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. And me.
Winner: Twitter
Traditional Old Dirty Media
Twitter: Newsweek asked this week if Twitter means brevity is the next big thing. BusinessWeek, in its usual manic-depressive style, conjured up a "raging Twitter debate" over whether microblogging is a leap forward or a spin out of control for the collective consciousness. CBS used the word "cyberspace," which is okay for a network that only recently retired the term "Information superhighway." The Wall Street Journal used Twitter as an example of clever thinking from an entrepreneur, explaining that founder Ev Williams dropped his startup's first product, a podcasting tool called Odeo (which the Journal says was nearly in the black) to focus on Twitter.
Justin.tv: Today Show, bitch. Justin chatted on the show live from San Francisco. He spent the rest of the day mocking the "irritating" questions like "What makes you feel comfortable?" "I dunno," he joked to a friend. "Blankets?" He's also been filmed by MTV and G4 TV and covered in a front-page SF Chronicle story.
Winner: Justin.tv
Stop asking me about
Twitter: How much we pull in. Twitter doesn't make money yet. The company doesn't get paid for all the text messages that run through it; in fact, it pays a per-message fee.
Justin.tv: What I do with my pants down. A camcorder watches me shower (but doesn't catch my junk), I tilt the camera up when I use the bathroom (sound's still on), and we haven't dealt with sex yet, but it'll probably get on camera. Haven't you already seen me naked?
How can you afford your rock-and-roll lifestyle
Twitter: Struggled with downtime under heavy use during the SXSW Interactive festival; down every week or two, usually for a few minutes to a few hours.
Justin.tv: Constantly breaking up; the site always loads fine, but the video feed has been constantly pounded, especially since hitting the Today show. The team is supposedly fixing this.
Called mundane?
Twitter: Forbes: "I'm not interested in what you had for breakfast."
Justin.tv: By CBS 5's Joe Vazquez. Granted, that guy's used to covering gunshot victims.
Compared to famous camgirl Jennicam?
Justin.tv: Duh.
Twitter: Yep.
Winner: Justin.tv, who's often seen as Jennicam with a microphone a dick.
Just the numbers
Justin.tv: 16 days old, 118 news items. About 200 viewers in each of five chat rooms on the site, for at least a thousand viewers at any given time.
Twitter: One year old, 367 news items. Over 19 million messages, assuming the system doesn't skip when assigning message numbers.
Winner: Twitter, thanks to the ten-second turnaround.
And the winner isssss
Both, of course, thanks to Justin's Twitter feed and the show's two unofficial feeds: the group feed at Justin TV Guide and the anyone-can-join Stalk Justin TV (started by me, written by anyone: password is zesjustintates).
Okay, really need a winner? For big-media hype, Justin's got more star appeal. For actual use, the masses choose Twitter. God, you really wanted a winner for a clearly mismatched contest?
Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Blogebrity, and Look Shiny. Hand him an invite to the also-hyped video site Joost so he can review it here.
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