I had an amazing time, and I met so many incredibly cool people. The fellow speakers on my panel, Jeff Croft, Dan Rubin and Garrett Dimon are all amazing, and it was a true honor to meet and speak with them. Seriously, you guys rock my world. Thank you to everyone who was nice enough to attend our session and for your feedback and comments.

J. Cornelius at Coffee Cup and everyone from Blue Flavor were such amazing hosts (Keith, Nick, and Jeff again — you all rock).

Over and beyond that, I met so many awesome people and attendees, I can’t adequately list them all now.

I’m going on vacation for a few days with Grant, so I’ll have plenty of time to write stuff up more coherently.

Suffice to say, I had an amazing weekend, met great people, drank great drinks and learned a LOT. Oh — and Grant finally saw the beauty in Django. So we can now be nerds who hack together. Yay!

Out!

Anyhoo, Grant is just one reason I’ve been less active — I’ve had other stuff going on and I’m trying to get a good schedule to handle all my writings and future projects (including filmgirl.tv which IS coming — the test runs I’ve done have sucked ass so I’m refining my approach).

What finally spurred my need to write on my personal blog was Twitter. Despite using it less and less over the last few weeks, I absolutely LOVE Twitter. LOVE. LOVE. But Twitter has had a rough week. Let’s discuss!

First, the downtime (because I think this is both more important long-term and because I think the frustration over it has made the second TOS issue more heated): It sucks. It sucks hardcore. The reason I’ve been on Twitter less isn’t just that I’m having a hard time dealing with how to parse so many followers (I like to follow people back and was overwhelmed when I reached the 500 follower mark and then the 1000 follower mark and now I’m approaching 1500…it is insanity, but in a good way!) — it’s because the damn service has been incredibly unreliable for me both on my MacBook (via Twitterrific and the web client) and on my BlackBerry (via Twitterberry, which was better in the last update but still totally lags in features compared to all the iPhone programs, and the iPhone isn’t even unlocked for 3rd party programs yet!). Unreliable service plus a million people = tons of frustration. When I get frustrated, I tend to just NOT use something as much.

I was hoping the problems would start to sort themselves out — and for a while it looked like that was on the verge of happening. But then the service started totally getting sucktastic over the last ten days and eating my updates and hiding my replies and I just had to go. AHHHH.

Still, I genuinely love Twitter and want nothing more than for the infrastructure and the service to succeed. I cannot even imagine using another service (FriendFeed just doesn’t do it for me — sorry, it just doesn’t.), because absolutely NO program, social network, IM service, forum, “community”, etc., etc. has had such a high ROI. The one possible exception would be LiveJournal back in 2001 — 2003, but that was more of a social ROI and less of a social AND professional ROI. And you had to put a whole lot more into LJ (at least I did) to get the goods back. With Twitter, I’ve met so many incredible people (Aaron, Jeremy, Loren, Shashi, Linda, Micah, LISA!!, MIKE DOE and a million others I’m forgetting) that I may never have met (in some cases it is an absolute certainty) and connected with people and an industry in a very real and very potent way.

Twitter is awesome and I have undoubtedly formed and become part of a community forged by Twitter.

But is Twitter, the service, a community?

That seems to be the root of the debate centered around Twitter’s Terms of Service. Let me start by saying that while I do not know Ariel Waldman, I do deeply empathize with her struggle. To my knowledge, I haven’t had anyone stalk or harass me on Twitter, but my stalker from high school DID show up on MySpace and initiated contact with me through subversive means (before I figured out who it was and told where to go) and it is one of many reasons I basically stopped using the site. That guy is mentally unstable and was demonstrably violent when I met him in 1997 (when we were both 14, almost 15) — I don’t even want to think about what he is capable of now (the fact that he was calling my parents house as recently as 2001 and tried to contact me through MySpace in 2006 is proof of his continued instability — we went on maybe two “dates” at the very beginning of 9th grade).

I understand being stalked and harassed, online or off. I understand how it can be hurtful and embarrassing to be called awful names online. I can only imagine how frustrating — and yes, scary — it could be for someone to reveal personal information about you online using an alias, or using a service like Twitter to say nasty things.

What I also understand, however, is that it isn’t Twitter’s role — TOS or not — to mediate these types of conflicts. I also agree with Twitter in saying that it shouldn’t be their role. I don’t want it to be their role. I’m usually not that libertarian on issues like this, but unless we’re talking clear-cut threats (things that say, “I’m going to kill you” — that sort of thing, again, while I do empathize with Ariel, I do not think being called the c-word, online, offline or otherwise is a threat.), I’m not a fan of any online service (“community” or not) stepping in. Flickr has a pretty stringent TOS in-place because the main medium being shared/commented on is photographs. Photographs, especially photos of “real” people carry certain rights and are subject to certain regulations that other mediums are not.

Again, I think it all comes down to a central question: is Twitter a community or a service. Personally, while I feel that I have met a community of people forged AROUND Twitter — I do not see Twitter itself as a community. Thus, I don’t see Twitter as an arbitrator in community issues. Stopping spam, bot-created accounts and other stuff — yes, that’s part of their job as a service. Getting involved in personal disputes (even if the subject matter is vile and is insulting), I’m not so sure.

From what I can gather, the jackasses account was erased in March. An account that lots of other people used to say things anonymously, like PostSecret, was what was being used to deliver the most recent unpleasant remarks. And see, whether or not accounts like that are a technical violation of the current TOS or not (and I so don’t care about the semantics of what the TOS says and what parts of the TOS they are actually willing to enforce — I am glad they are going to update it to be reflective of their actual position), getting involved in those kinds of disputes is just, in my opinion, opening up a can of worms that will only be an unending nightmare for the Twitter employees — who don’t have a lot of time as it is — and I’ll admit my own selfishness here, I would rather they focus their efforts on getting the service usable and stable than getting into user-to-user disputes.

Plus, while Flickr is used as the main example of why Twitter should get involved (and that is their own fault — they used some of their terms in drafting their terms), let’s look at other services like Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal, AIM, etc., etc. Most of those services will not get involved AT ALL in user-to-user debates. Do you even KNOW how much drama goes on online between girls in middle school and high school online? I mean, holy shit, I remember the level of stupid and over-dramaticicism when I was in high school — 7 years later — I can’t even imagine. Group chats on AIM where people say bad things about you and then forward the chat transcripts to everyone in your class. I’m sure that’s all done on blogs now (we sometimes used “guest books”). I don’t know if it is because I’m more immune to this sort of behavior because I grew up as it was kind of starting (I was in 8th grade when AOL REALLY took off, so I consider myself part of Generation Web 1.0), or that I just find online attacks less important than others (personally, if I see nasty stuff written about another person online, I don’t automatically take it as fact — if anything, I discount the nastiness immediately because I tend to devalue ADULTS who act like children), but I can’t really get upset if people write or say bad things about me online. I mean, I’m ultimately responsible for putting my words and my information out there. I accept the consequences of making my life (or parts of my life) “public.”

In college, when I didn’t write for any well-trafficked web sites or participate in any larger-spread web communities, I felt more at ease to write about my personal angst and ennui in my journal. I still didn’t publicize it — I still protected any entries about close friends, roommates, boyfriends or family members. As soon as I got the gig with USA Today last year, I realized I would have to use my private journal in a different way — and I accepted that. Oh — FYI — the most blatantly awful e-mails I have ever received (though they are closely tied with some of the TUAW comments on the devil’s advocate parenting post I wrote) were from Clay Aiken fans — women in their 40s and 50s — threatening me, sending me viruses and e-mail bombs and trying to find out my personal information because I dared say that the guy didn’t have any talent. Yeah…

Twitter is a tool; a service. The service itself does not constitute a community. If the users of Twitter who consider themselves a community want to set certain acceptable and unacceptable limits for what is appropriate and inappropriate, we can choose to unfollow or block people we find vile and disgusting. The answer, I think, is to not feed the trolls. The answer is not to have the service act as a mediator, a judge or an arbitrator in interpersonal disputes. Personally, I don’t want Ev or Biz involved in my personal issues. I don’t want anyone from any service involved in my personal issues. A real threat or a violation of the service using spam or bots — fine — but insults will happen with or without Twitter. Why waste time focussing on fixing a problem that will only get bigger the more you poke it?

Again, I ultimately think the reaction to this issue was exasperated by the downtime of the service. If the service was working better, people would be less inclined to jump on any bandwagon. Instead, it is easier to see this as just another area that the service is failing. I understand this — and it is unfortunate for Twitter that this discussion is taking place now (though it is a discussion that needs to happen). It’s just another reason Twitter needs to FIX THEIR SHIT!!!

Alright, I’m out!

One of the many great things about Twitter is that you get so used to someone’s avatar, you can call out to them in a crowd, even at something like SXSWi. Several people recognized me by name just because of Twitter, which has the result of making you feel both a weird (in a totally awesome way) and pseudo-famous. The “I’m a somebody” vibe only increases because so many people are doing video interviews and podcasts.

Please understand, I know I’m not even fake Internet famous (trust me, I KNOW), but that won’t stop me from pimping the interviews I did last week.

In an effort to not totally kill your feed reader with flash files,

Loren Feldman 1938Media.com

OK, Loren has been one of my favorite web video guys for a LONG, LONG time. Being interviewed by him, meeting him in person (sorry his lady was sick, it would have been great to meet her) and hanging out at the Gawker party was just a blast. Loren would be the man even if he hadn’t interviewed Grant and I for his site.

Aaron “Technosailor” Brazell Technosailor.com

Aaron is such a great guy! He’s been a favorite Twitterati for quite some time and I love all the stuff he does on his site and with b5Media. It was such a blast hanging out with Aaron and his crew. Plus, you gotta love a guy who yells “Beacon sucks!” during the Facebook keynote.

Styledash Geek Chic Profile

Yeah, I won’t lie. This is pretty insane. Geek Chic is going global baby!

And Styledash also has this utterly awesome Guide to Geek Chic at SXSW

And no Media Whoredom post would be complete without linking to my interview with Guy Kawasaki of Alltop.com and Truemors — more interviews will be up in the coming days on DownloadSquad (our hotel wifi was teh suck).

twitter stats

Originally uploaded by Christina E Warren

Check it — my Twitter stats! Thanks to Damon Cortesi (https://twitter.com/dacort) for his awesome Twitter Stats script (http://dcortesi.com/2007/12/27/twitter-stats/).

And to think, I said I wouldn’t use Twitter. I said I wouldn’t become addicted. I said it wouldn’t suck me in.

Oh, how very, very, very wrong I was.

(this has been updated from my first posting earlier this evening — Damon corrected an error that was improperly reporting January/Tuesday tweets )