"Publishers resort to all different types of less-than-desirable ways to drive traffic. Buying traffic — or the dark arts of SEO — is part of many publishers’ toolkits. But often the most egregious part of the tactic is the link bait, the quirky headlines, tweets and status updates that scream 'CLICK ME.' At best, they’re alarming headlines; at worst, they’re misleading. Despite many complaints over these tactics — last week a snarky Twitter account was set up to ape Huffington Post’s penchant to troll for clicks in tweets — these tactics more often than not don’t hurt publishers where it counts: revenue."

"It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment it happened — but at some point, Twitter became a dark place." lol LOL

— Shani O. Hilton (@shani_o) January 30, 2013

One Matt K. Lewis is very angry with Twitter.

But first, I'm in love with his opening sentence. "Soren Dayton and Rob Bluey — two conservative tech geniuses — talked me into joining Twitter during a lunch Ed Morrissey organized at an Iraqi restaurant in Minneapolis during the 2008 Republican convention." I've heard of maybe two of these things, if you include "2008." WHY. WHAT? But in any event, here's the story of what happened to Matt K. [...]

The Blog Lord Giveth and the Blog Lord Taketh Away. (Well, nine hours later.)

Another day, another newspaper bankruptcy. This time it was the Journal Register national chain, home to eighteen small dailies including the New Haven Register, and now operating under the seemingly sexier-sounding name of Digital First Media. That rechristening had been trumpeted as more than mere window-dressing—Digital First Media’s senior executives publicly embraced the Internet as the future of journalism, boasting of not only their "digital DNA," but also their determination to “stop listening to newspaper people” and their stuck-in-the-past, ink-stained thinking. Don’t panic over vanishing print ad revenue, Digital First chief executive John Paton insisted last September: If you stack them high enough, “Digital dimes can replace Print [...]

I don't ever, ever want to have random people "sharing tips" with me or giving me advice about where to go (either inadvertently or directly), because most people have terrible taste, but that being said, Foursquare 5.0 is absolutely beautiful, feeling somehow even more pared down while it's got lots of new stuff. It even handles the thorny issue of recommendations quite well, mixing local, trending and personalized.

"In an e-mail to Stickybits's investors, the pair explained Turntable and gave them a choice: They could take back what money remained or stick with them. All except one kept the faith. Chasen's announcement, made the day the staff returned from the winter holiday, was abrupt: The developers, with one exception, would cease work on Stickybits immediately. The business side would wind down client relationships. Left unsaid: All except a skeleton crew would soon leave the company." —An enjoyable story about the path to date of Turntable.fm. It's also an interesting reminder that entrepreneurs may be "job creators" but also sometimes they lay off everyone along the way.

Sheryl Sandberg Leaves Work at 5:30 Every Day — And You Should Toomashable.com/2012/04/05/she…

— Caitrin O'Sullivan (@CaitrinO) April 9, 2012

"I mean honestly, people, if you don’t have a rich husband and a job that’s willing to be flexible with your hours, it’s entirely your fault." Oh sure. Though I'm pretty sure the Facebook COO is far richer by now than her husband. Anyway, I'll be leaving work today at 4:30 p.m., so you know, watch my moves, people.

"Mosaic, based on the work of Berners-Lee and the hypertext theorists before him, is generally recognized as the beginning of the web as it is now known. Mosaic, the first web browser to win over the Net masses, was released in 1993 and made freely accessible to the public. The adjective phenomenal, so often overused in this industry, is genuinely applicable to the… 'explosion' in the growth of the web after Mosaic appeared on the scene. Starting with next to nothing, the rates of the web growth (quoted in the press) hovering around tens of thousands of percent over ridiculously short periods of time were no real surprise." —Mosaic, [...]