Job Openings

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Twitter Wants To Get More Journalists On Twitter

Although many journalists are on Twitter and use the social network on an almost obsessive basis, they want to take it official. To use the parlance of another social network, they want to go from “It’s Complicated” to “In a Relationship.” And how better to do that than to create a  position? Today, Twitter posted a link to a new job description: “Head of News and Journalism.”  Read More

Retail Therapy

Duane Reade at 40 Wall Street. (Photo via Shao-yu Liu.)

The Re-Education of Duane Reade: A Drugstore as Retail, Therapy

It’s not every weekend that Kerri Gristina, a schoolteacher living in the Bronx, manages to round up her three daughters and load them into the car for a Manhattan outing. When she does, she’ll take them to a Broadway play, to a museum or just to frolic around Central Park. But no matter what else they do that day, the busy mom always manages to carve out some time for one special stop along the way.

“They have natural options, organic options,” Ms. Gristina, who writes a blog called Raising Three Savvy Ladies, told The New York Observer of her favorite place to buy beauty products in NYC. “It’s like a designer store. Maybe it costs more, but having more variety is worth it.”

No, it’s not the Laura Mercier or Bobbi Brown counter at Bergdorf’s. Ms. Gristina’s guilty primping pleasure is Duane Reade.

Seriously. Read More

Das Racism

Great headline, great everything. (TMZ.com)

New Hashtag Pokes Fun at TMZ’s Racist Coverage of the Boston Bombers

TMZ.com, your trusted source of all the news that’s fit to vomit, had a hard-hitting exclusive today. “The older brother who was killed and suspected in the Boston bombings was deep into hip hop, and it appears he belonged to a fan website that touted that genre of music,” read a post that was titled “Dead Bombing Suspect Heavy Into Hip Hop.” The “article” then elaborated on what this relationship could mean:

What’s interesting … hip hop lyrics are notoriously violent and often degrading to women.  Tamerlan Tsarnaev has a boxing profile in which he says he doesn’t take his shirt off much because he doesn’t want women to get bad ideas, adding, “I’m very religious.”  This statement is significantly more conservative than the hip hop genre.

Unfortunately, this brilliant extrapolation has not been lauded for its hard-hitting investigative process. Instead, a new trend on Twitter–#TMZReports– has emerged, mocking the site’s perceived racism. Read More

Sad sloganeering

Via Twitter

Texas Congressman is Pro-Life and Pro-Prenatal Gun Ownership

Are you guys ready to read tweets from  Rep. Steve “The most conservative Congressman in Texas! 100% lifetime NRA, GOA, NAGR, Right to Life rating. Offended? Yell at @DonnyFerguson” Stockman?

Are you??! Because fair warning, he’s got himself a new bumper sticker idea, and it definitely includes some nonsensical sloganeering about abortion, babies and guns.

So…you ready for it? Read More

The Bombshell

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Stopping the Next Steubenville

If you see something, say something. That paranoid punch line of a public service campaign has worked: nobody looks the same way at a stray backpack on the subway, and we just might call the cops.

Sadly, the same adage doesn’t apply to young American men and women watching guys strip and violate a drunken Read More

That's Some Pig

Artist rendition of Leo

Leo the Pig Leaves Bloomberg’s New York to Live on a ‘Farm’ ‘Upstate’

This is why we really don’t want animals to be part of the singularity … how sad would it be when every time a pig with a Twitter account hashtags “bittersweet” when referring to the fact that it’s going to be moving to a “farm upstate”? Really, really sad. But when it comes to our favorite mini-pig, the idea of becoming bacon is no problem, because he has a new dad!

Leo the pig rose to fame/his own social media presence (same diff) recently, thanks to efforts of his former owner, Bloomberg TV journalist Heather Hauswirth. When Ms. Hauswirth first posted her Craigslist ad in the voice of her 4-month-old “certified mini pig,” who needed a nice new home and a caretaker to nuzzle with (d’waaa!), the adorable animal immediately started getting attention: on Twitter, where Leo had his own account, a Bloomberg TV segment and, most incredibly, a guest spot on Anderson Cooper Live today.

And now Leo has a new owner! Who lives on a farm! Upstate! Which is hopefully the same farm that dad took our dog Pongo to when he started getting sick. Read More

Mashup

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9 of Our Favorite #BuzzFeedNewYorker Tweets

BuzzFeed and The New Yorker couldn’t be more different, right? Well, what if you combined them? In honor (we assume) of the news of tech editor Matt Buchanan’s seemingly unlikely path from the Internet-friendly world of BuzzFeed to the prestige brand of The New Yorker, a hashtag has sprung up on Twitter to mash up the two sensibilities. Meet #BuzzFeedNewYorker.

Here are our nine of our favorites (in no particular order): Read More

Celebrity Twitter

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Best Responses to Shirley Temple Opening Pandora’s ‘Honey Boo Boo’ Box on Twitter

Poor Shirley Temple Black/person pretending to be Shirley Temple Black on Twitter (we believe nothing till an account is verified): The 84-year-old former pre-tween movie star was on Twitter less than one day before she was asked about cultural phenom Honey Boo Boo. The question, which came from Model Alliance’s Coco Rocha, could be taken as an insult–why ask Shirley Temple about the TLC star unless you consider Ms. Temple’s celebrity status to have been similar?–but luckily Ms. Temple was just confused. Confused enough to ask Twitter: “i have been asked what i think of ‘honey boo’, can someone tell me who that is.” The resulting answers were, for lack of a better word, fantastic. Read More

Technology

Making hearts and algorithms throb.

Third Time’s (even more) the Charm? Ori Allon Aims to Replicate Success With NY Real Estate Startup

Ori Allon, the charmed entrepreneur who has already sold one company to Google and another to Twitter, has been feverishly working on his third—Urban Compass. So far, Mr. Allon and founder Robert Reffkin won’t even say what Urban Compass does. But that air of mystery hasn’t slowed the company’s growth—they have raised $8 million from an impressive group of seed funders including Goldman Sachs, AmEx CEO Ken Chenault and Thrive Capital*. The start-up now has 18 employees and counting.

One of those 18 offers a clue to what Urban Compass will actually involve, and our guess is real estate. As first reported by The Real Deal, Gordon Golub, who was an Executive Vice President at Citi Habitats, left after 18 years to join Mr. Allon and Mr. Reffkin. Read More