Jon Snow sets Rupert Murdoch straight about 'social decay'.

[Via Extenuating Circumstances]

Michael Mace on Twitter the telegraph at Gettysburg:

With our obsession for newness, those of us who work in the tech industry often fail to understand the historical roots of our technologies. Case in point: telegraph operators more than 150 years ago were sending short messages called "graphs" that were surprisingly similar in form and content to Twitter tweets.

One remarkable example was recently discovered in the Museum of Telegraphy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It is the transcript of a telegraph operator's comments during Abraham Lincoln's famed Gettysburg Address in 1863. The transcript was shared with me by a friend on the museum staff, and I'm pleased to reproduce it here:

---

Still waiting for the Pres. to commence his speech. #gettysburg

Good heavens, I should have foresworn that fifth corn dodger for lunch. #gas #dontask #gettysburg

Starting now. Pres. waves to crowd. #gettysburg

Four score and… WTF is a score? 25? #pleasespeakenglish #gettysburg

Okay, it's twenty. So "87 years ago the country was founded." Why not just say that? Duh. #gettysburg

[...]

Margaret Atwood has posted another¹ tribute to the Twungle:

[On Twitter...] you find yourself doing all sorts of things you wouldn't otherwise do. And once you've entered the Enchanted E-Forest, lured in there by cute bunnies and playful kittens, you can find yourself wandering around in it for quite some time. You might even find yourself climbing the odd tree – the very odd tree – or taking refuge in the odd hollow log – the very odd hollow log – because cute bunnies and playful kittens are not the only things alive in the mirkwoods of the Web. Or the webs of the mirkwoods. Paths can get tangled there. Plots can get thickened. Games are afoot.

1. Previously. ↩

Best. @Reply. Ever?.

[Via @davepell]

The fake @MayorEmanuel Twitter feed looks set to become a classic of the genre:

[It's the day before the mayoral election in Chicago. Infamously short-tempered former Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is preparing to make one last push in his bid to succeed Mayor Daley...]

Let's just keep the motherfucking coffee coming, non-fucking stop.

MayorEmanuel
February 21, 2011 at 14:31

When I run for reelection, I'm having a motherfucking hand-shaking robot built.

MayorEmanuel
February 21, 2011 at 15:01

Carl the Intern and Axelrod are directing the InterCorps from "the command center"–a laptop and a map in the backseat of the fucking Civic.

MayorEmanuel
February 21, 2011 at 16:02

Asked Carl how things were going, and he said "In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight." The fuck does that mean?

MayorEmanuel
February 21, 2011 at 16:05

Then, come election day, things went in a very unexpected (and hugely entertaining) direction. Read on…

The twitterverse according to jwz.

Meg Pickard's post about AmazonFAIL is far and away the sanest, most balanced account I've read of the whole sorry affair.

There's a great deal to be learned from this fiasco; not just for Amazon, but also by users¹ of social media.

1. Where 'users' means both those posting messages and those reading and reacting to them. ↩

Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink:

[Celebrated Guardian editor] CP Scott would have warmly endorsed this – his well-known observation 'Comment is free but facts are sacred' is only 36 characters long, a spokesman said in a tweet that was itself only 135 characters long.

Almost as good an April Fool as the notion that Alan Shearer is Newcastle United's new manager.¹

[Via Qwghlm]

1. What?!? ↩