A single person clapped and, realizing they were all alone, stopped.

Mr. Shanks continued, “It exudes the grandeur of Gotham and the dazzle of the iconic Mad Men design gone modern.” Mr. Shanks cleared his throat. “It’s really amazing.”

Last Monday, a group (of “top hotel and publishing executives as well as media industry influencers,” per a press release) was gathered at a private party to celebrate the grand reopening of the gut-renovated hotel and the launch of its new partnership with Penguin Books.

Scheduled to coincide with Book Expo America, a massive publishing trade show that forces attendees to trudge all the way to 11th Ave., three evening readings and panels were to take place in the lobby.

These readings, called the Penguin Preview Series at the Round Table, will continue on a quarterly basis. Another aspect of the new partnership is the Night-table Reading promotion, in which books and galleys from Penguin’s recent releases will be distributed to hotel guests each night.

It’s all a concerted effort to reclaim the “rich literary history” (a phrase repeated ad nauseum through the night) of the hotel, where, during the 1920s, the Algonquin Round Table met for lunch to exchange jokes and barbs, where The New Yorker was born in 1925, and where Dorothy Parker said that thing about leading a horticulture (you can’t make her think).

Penguin authors abounded: Elizabeth Gilbert, Ron Chernow and Simon Doonan milled around, Rachel Dratch chatted with John Hodgman in another corner, and Andrew Ross Sorkin, who dropped by on the late side.

We asked Mr. Hodgman if a literary salon could be revived in this way. Can there be another Algonquin Round Table?

“Salon culture still exists, but it’s online now. Writers don’t need to get together in an actual place any more,” Mr. Hodgman mused. “Though writers would benefit from a meeting place, because there would be alcohol and table service. Writers love hotels because they are the living rooms they cannot afford themselves.”

Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz responded to the same question with characteristic flourish, but no optimism. “An incubator for personalities supremely attuned to this socio-cultural moment—it would be a wonderful thing for human circuitry. But communities have diffused and moved into the thinnest splinters,” he said.

Marion Meade, biographer of Algonquin patron sinner Dorothy Parker, clutched a glass of white wine with both hands, and proudly gestured toward one of her books, displayed in a glass cabinet in the lobby.

When asked if the spirit of the place could be revived simply by hosting readings and stuffing a new novel next to the Bible in each bedside drawer, Ms. Meade replied with an acerbic pragmatism.

“They are probably the only hotel in New York that has this kind of literary history. If they don’t use it, they’re pretty stupid, and they’re not stupid. Whether they can keep it up with Penguin, who knows, but I give them credit for trying.”

What would Dorothy Parker think of this latest campaign to capitalize upon the hotel’s literary pedigree?

“She’d think it was bullshit,” came the answer.

"Ours might be the only one left," said Mr. Clement.

Are the Internet sensations more popular here or back home in New Zealand, the Daily Transom wondered?

"We're famous in New Zealand for being famous in the States," said Mr. Clement. "We're known as the guys who are famous over here."

Like good New Zealanders, they boycotted the Australia movie, and hatched their own plans for a follow-up: New Zealand. "It'll be an epic love story set [there]," said executive producer James Bobin.

"I've heard of angry Australians being mistaken for New Zealanders. And that's entirely due to our show," said Mr. Clement. He was dressed for a recession in a vintage brown suit, and a striped blue and white shirt with bulky brown buttons. "This was 10 American dollars," he said, tugging at the suit, "and this was $10 as well"-indicating the shirt-"so I've got on $20 here."

Daily Show correspondent and "I'm a PC" star John Hodgman was equally casual in a blazer and New Balance tennis shoes. How would the Daily Show handle Barack Obama's presidency, we asked?

"There certainly is a question mark in terms of what sort of jokes they're going to be, and what the tenor of times are going to be, and where the humor is, but as trained comedy professionals, they're thoroughbreds, they want to run," said Mr. Hodgman of the show's writers. "They're eager to try out some new stuff. I think it's an unbalanced time for everybody. While they try to figure out what kind of jokes to make, I'm trying to figure out-maybe I should start showering in the evenings? It's time to change up the routine."

Would Mr. Hodgman ever revive his popular Williamsburg reading series, the Little Gray Books Lectures? "Right now, the Daily Show and the work I'm doing for Apple absorb most of the time I would have spent putting on variety shows in bars," said Mr. Hodgman. "But who knows? Very soon, I could be going back to bars, tapping on the mike, saying, ‘Is this thing on?'"

A few minutes later, Mr. Kahn gave in and started his own account: @mileskahn. Mr. Hodgman linked to Mr. Kahn’s page and, almost instantly, hundreds of the more than 25,000 of Mr. Hodgman’s fans who subscribe to his Twitter updates started following @mileskahn.

“Oh dear. What have I gotten myself into. Hooooodgmaaaaaan!” Mr. Kahn blogged, two minutes after signing up. “How will twitter change my life? And how can I exact revenge on John Hodgman?”

On its surface, Twitter seems like the consummate procrastination tool for a new generation of narcissists. Signing up is easy: Users enter a username, password and email address and are issued a blog page, to which they submit updates about daily routines, musings and activities. Each entry is limited to 140 characters, including spaces, punctuation and room for links. You can “follow” other updates from friends, coworkers and corporate accounts, and their “tweets” will be displayed in a simple layout on the home page. Whether they’re “riding the N to work,” “gossiping with the boss at the Spotted Pig” or “reading the latest issue of The New York Observer”—it’ll all be there on Twitter. The blog is public by default, so anybody can check individual updates unless a user makes them private; then only approved “followers” can see them. Twitter works on desktop computers’ Web browsers, but busy New Yorkers can also text-message updates to their account or download applications onto their iPhones or BlackBerrys to keep their followers up to date, on the go.

Although Twitter was popular among the early-adopter geek set in 2007, it didn’t become achieve juggernaut status until last year. The site’s administrators do not release official numbers of users, but TwitDir, an independent online tracking service, estimated that there are more than three million. According to HubSpot, an Internet marketing company, 70 percent of Twitter users joined last year, and 5,000 to 10,000 new accounts are added every day.

Twitter is tiny compared to social networking behemoths like Facebook (which has more than 60 million active users and an average of 250,000 new registrations per day, according to company stats, not to mention offering a Twitterish status-update feature as part of its service), but for now, at least, it is the hot thing.

So who is Twittering? Everyone from pop stars like Britney Spears (@britneyspears: “I love Japan! I think all the tiny cars are so cute!”) to sports figures like biker Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong: “Hammered 80 miles today”) and the self-proclaimed “very quotatious” Shaquille O’Neal (@the_real_shaq: “Twitter me this, twitter me that. Hello to all my twittereans, This is the shaq Love u guys”). Diablo Cody, the Juno screenwriter and former stripper, will be live-Twittering the premiere of her new Showtime sitcom The United States of Tara on Jan. 18 at the account @DiabloOnTara. “It’ll be like Pop-Up Video only even lamer and more meta,” she wrote in a statement.

And of course media people have accounts, from airy Web-lebrities like Julia Allison (@juliaallison: “I am listening to a Techno Remix of Titanic’s “My Heart Will Go On”) to The New Yorker’s music writer Sasha Frere-Jones (@sashafrerejones: “I want Britt Daniel to mix all rock records”). Barack Obama’s new-media team touted Twitter as a powerful tool during his presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton is on there, too. So is Al Gore. News services including The New York Times and CNN have joined, updating with their latest headlines. There is an account called @themediaisdying, run by an anonymous publicist who announces the latest insider news on media layoffs and magazine shutterings. And for those who still have a lunch break, there’s a user-generated Shake Shack account which continually updates how long the line is at Danny Meyer’s popular Madison Square Park fast food joint.

MOST PEOPLE who aren’t Twitter users don’t get it. They are already bored to tears reading Facebook status messages about their friends “needing coffee” or announcing that “it’s snowing!” I can look out the window too, pal. Isn’t there already enough white noise on the Internet? Can we say anything meaningful in 140 characters? Why would I risk my privacy and announce where I am at all hours? Isn’t this just another popularity contest? (The number of people you follow, along with the number of people who follow you, are prominently displayed at the top of your blog page.)

SURELY, some Twitter users are on there solely to get their ego fix. There’s also lots of publicists on there trying to shill their company’s products (cheers, @Starbucks!). But once you start following the right people, Twitter can be useful, converging some of the best aspects of the Internet into a customized message board, news service, gossip blog and email client all in one.

According to Twitter’s Web site, the first prototype of the microblogging platform was built in two weeks in March 2006, as a side project of Jack Dorsey, a St. Louis native, who attended New York University and worked in Manhattan as a software engineer before moving to California. He built Twitter based on a simple interest: What were his friends doing? What are they seeing, reading, listening to? Facebook and instant-messaging status updates provided some insight, but most people aren’t specific enough. Blog entries can be too long and time consuming. What about something simple and easy to manage?

Mr. Dorsey developed Twitter alongside co-founders Evan Williams (who launched the Blogger blogging platform) and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Biz Stone, and introduced the site publicly in August 2006. In May 2007, Twitter Incorporated was founded.

Facebook attempted to buy Twitter last November for $500 million in stock. Twitter declines, and still hasn’t come up with a business model that satisfies the technorati; the site has very little advertising.

Many describe the Twitter experience as an online water cooler (or happy hour, depending on the kind of people you follow) where friends and coworkers can check in on each other during the day and find out what everyone is doing or interested in. It’s also kind of like a personal RSS feed, updating you on acquaintances’ lives in short headlines. If a friend “tweets” that he’s at the Guggenheim, you can tell him to check out your favorite Kandinsky painting on the second floor. If one of the users you follow tweets that they need a Thai restaurant recommendation, you can respond to them with a “Direct Message” (kind of like an email service on Twitter) or just put an “@” symbol before their account name in an update, and the response will be public. You can also check out what his followers recom mended, and try a new place next time you’re in the mood for pad see ew.

Twitter also works as a genuine news aggregator. Lots of tech blogs have been hyping Twitter’s potential since its inception. It became a source for emergency coordination and disaster relief during the San Diego fires in 2007. In November, on-the-ground reports of Mumbai terror attacks also put the idea in motion. CNN reported that an estimated 80 messages, or “tweets,” were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates. In some cases, Twitterers were able to be on the scene long before TV and newspaper reporters could get there.

Sure, Twitter has its problems. Sometimes the site crashes from too much traffic and you can’t update your blog. Sometimes it feels like a creepy, text-based GPS friends-tracker (lots of people download a LoJack-like iPhone application, posting the device’s global coordinates in real time on their Twitter page). And hackers are on the attack. On Jan. 5, a bunch of high-profile accounts, including CNN’s Rick Sanchez, were invaded. Britney Spears’s had this update: “HI Yall! Brit Brit here, just wanted to update you all on the size of my vagina. Its about 4 feet wide with razor sharp teeth.” It was later removed.

At its worst, Twitter is an addictive annoyance that could just end up being another fad in the ever-changing tech landscape. But at its best, Twitter provides a vast array of often informative, sometimes hilarious, updates from the Web into one place. And crafting tweets is a daily practice in pithy precision. My account is @gillianmae. Come follow me.

greagan@observer.com

"Literary immortality comes at a price," Mr. Hodgman said. "Book promotion: the demeaning ritual known as the television appearance where the solitary genius is forced to hold conversations with the likes of—well, what's your title again, Jon? Master of ceremonies? Comedy barker? Oh yes, cable jester."

Mr. Hodgman's most practical advice comes down to this: Make an energetic entrance, and make sure to open with an anecdote.

The company, whose recent quarterly profit growth has been upstaged by Apple, is hoping that the 54-year-old comedian will help make Windows seem less stale and outdated. But the choice of Mr. Seinfeld--who is most associated with his eponymous, and quintessentially '90s, New York-based sitcom--has left more than a few industry observers scratching their heads, especially since Mr. Seinfeld will reportedly appear in ads with 52-year-old Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. After all, there is a reason Steve Jobs recruited Drew Barrymore's ex-hottie Justin Long to be the cool young Mac representative, and glasses-wearing author John Hodgman as the uncool PC, in the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads, rather than appearing in any ads himself.

The campaign was conceived by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, a Miami-based ad agency recently hired by Microsoft to redefine its image. The new ads are expected to premiere Sept. 4 and will use a variation of the slogan "Windows, Not Walls," according to several people close to the deal that the WSJ was able to reach off the record. Also considered for the ads were comedians Will Ferrell and Chris Rock.

Robert Passikoff, the president of the New York branding firm Brand Keys, said of Microsoft, "They are not seen as cool. Apple is cool. Can anyone even recall a Microsoft ad? No."

From the article:

At least they knew what they wanted.

Really though: none of the big publishing execs were there and neither was Jonathan Safran Foer, and that meant all the nice editors who came—silvery haired ones like Paul Slovak from Viking as well as young ones like Matthew Weiland from the Paris Review and Jamison Stoltz from Grove/Atlantic—could just talk about the books they liked, and it was okay.

Some of these people brought books with them, even, and donated them to the store. Dwight Garner, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, said he brought a copy of Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, "a party trick," he said in an e-mail this morning, that "most people in literary Manhattan seem to have mastered."

"The Housing Works party is always one of the year's great ones because Bayard's advice isn't required," Mr. Garner said. "Everyone there seems to have read everything."

National Book Critics Circle president John Freeman said that Housingworks is one of the few places in town where such a crowd can still gather. At first he mentioned something about the "downtown literary scene," but after looking around he conceded that almost everyone he saw lived in Brooklyn.

A young writer named Julian Tepper talked about a book he'd just finished writing, about a man who finds eight unpublished Chekhov stories in Central Park and publishes them under his own name. Taking the old and making it new: In this way, Mr. Tepper was a metaphor.

The humorist John Hodgman, meanwhile, who hosted the evening alongside Eat Pray Love lady Elizabeth Gilbert, said something during his speech about how Housingworks was like a chapel for books. He said he wanted to stay there forever and set up a little home for himself on the second floor. In this way, he also was a metaphor.

Neoclassicism, not nostalgia, was the point. Why? Because for all the tall tales, working in the publishing business was probably never much better than it is right now, and parties can still be pretty good, even though things fall apart.

John Hodgman was drinking a smoothie inside the cavernous Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Soon the 32-year-old would switch to rye whiskey. It was 7:30 p.m., and the place was filling up with the 100 or so people Mr. Hodgman has met during his 10 years in New York City. In 2001, he began M.C.'ing these "Little Gray Book Lectures," which were inspired by the instructional pamphlets that were popular during the 1920's ("How to Seek Your Fortune," "How to Speak With Strangers," "What Will Happen in the Future?", "Europe vs. America") and which, on paper, sound exactly like the sort of self-consciously twee literary crap that Dave Eggers and McSweeney's have unintentionally spawned. The only thing is, the "Little Gray Book Lectures" are actually funny, and the vibe is surprisingly cozy. Mr. Hodgman's deadpan-but-warm manner-think Conan O'Brien in a camel-hair jacket-runs the show.

This night, he took the microphone and led the way through the night's acts: A GQ writer talked about foie gras and served some on paper plates. Jon Langford from the punk band the Mekons strapped on an electric guitar, reminisced about his art-school days in the 70's, and sang "Never Been in a Riot" and "I Love a Millionaire." Next up: an auction benefiting City Harvest-items included a mysterious typewriter, a headhunter statue and a case of whiskey. A video was played of bidders from past auctions giving wry I Love the 80's–style commentary about the items they'd bid on: recipes, a frying pan, a piano.

Mr. Hodgman's self-deprecating schtick brought the room into a warm, not-unpleasant haze of mutual admiration.

"He speaks in perfect sentences, and he had the dry, mature, man-in-a-smoking-jacket wit of an 80-year-old Oxford don when he was 25," said novelist Elizabeth Gilbert. "John pretends sometimes to be a cranky and grumpy person when he is actually compassionate and optimistic."

"John's events feature many of the same performers as from the hipster literary scene, but there's a much homier, warmer, more communal vibe," said writer Neal Pollack. "John is the real draw: He's a perfect host and a perfect gentleman."

"I was born at the age of about 45," Mr. Hodgman said. The only child of a businessman and a nurse in Brookline, Mass., young John had asthma and liked to watch Mary Tyler Moore and read Tintin books. "I was ruthlessly responsible and well-liked by all adults, which allowed me opportunity for subversion," he said. At Brookline High, he carried around a briefcase and co-edited a humor magazine that featured short stories about self-mutilation and X-rated comics.

At Yale, he took a class with literary critic Harold Bloom.

"As we all know, the man is a maniac," he said. "He has perhaps the largest brain on the planet …. It was really Bloom who taught me to be a comedian."

In the mid-1990's, Mr. Hodgman worked his way up to becoming a literary agent at Writers House. In 1997, George Plimpton edited a story of his for The Paris Review ("one of those life-altering moments"). In 2000, he turned most of his attention to writing, including a 13-part advice column on the McSweeney's Web site called "Ask the Former Professional Literary Agent."

Now he writes regularly for Men's Journal about booze and food, and occasionally for The New York Times Magazine. He recently sold a book, The Areas of My Expertise, which will be filled with "amazing historical true facts" (e.g., U.S. Presidents who had hooks for hands). "I would say the amount of true material is roughly zero," he added.

Of course, like Mr. Eggers, Mr. Hodgman is slowly acquiring fans-and literary fans, particularly those who flock to literary parties, rarely give their heroes a good name. Mr. Eggers wrote one terrific book and was so avidly embraced by horrid young hopefuls that one could make the case that we haven't caught a real glimpse of the writer since.

Fortunately, Mr. Hodgman lives on the Upper West Side with his wife of four years, Katherine Fletcher, who teaches English at Stuyvesant High School, and their daughter, whom he refers to as Hodgmina. "Since becoming a parent, I don't go out very much," he said.

Though, of course, there are exceptions.

Mr. Pollack recalled an evening when he and Mr. Hodgman gave a reading together. "It ended with us getting mauled by a woman in a bear costume," he said. "She couldn't see very well, so we had to keep throwing ourselves into her to allow the mauling to occur. Then we went out and got drunk, as is our wont-cocktail hour always starts early, and the cocktails are usually good. So his presence is warm and merry, but the next morning you curse him."

Mr. Hodgman wants to bring his "Little Gray Book Lectures" to radio.

"It needs to become something else," he said. "I think it's reached a very pleasant level of demi-quasi-notoriety within a small circle of people, but in order for it to be worth doing and creatively interesting, it has to grow and evolve."

Are his fans cult-like?

"Well, I hope that they would kill themselves if I asked them to," he said. "It's not a cult technically, but if I asked them to dress alike, I hope that they would. You know, I'm not doing this for nothing."

-George Gurley