What is the real-time web? 

Four words: It Happens Without Waiting.

Narrative: Today I wrote a piece about the Berkeley Public Library on InBerkeley.Com. I wanted to find a pointer to the library website, so I switched over to Google. Looked up Berkeley Public Library. My piece, publshed less than a minute earlier. was the first item. Real-time web. (True story.)

The SUL as a tool to control news? 

SUL is Twitter's Suggested Users List.

It's a group of approximately 500 Twitter users who are "suggested" to new users when they create an account. The stated purpose is to provide people to watch when you're starting out. But are there other purposes? Could it be used to reward positive coverage and punish negative coverage? I think we now have some data on that.

There's no doubt that Twitter has received a lot of help from the press, and much of it is genuine enthusiasm for a communication tool that at least hints at the future of news.

Many of the suggested users are news organizations, reporters, columnists, marketers, and as a result, most have over a million followers. Almost all of the top tech news organizations are on the list. And TechCrunch was one of them until something happened in July as is evident in this TwitterCounter graph.

Compare this to the graph for Mashable, over the same period.

And plotted on the same graph.

It's pretty clear something happened in July.

We know this much -- TechCrunch was dropped from the Suggested User List, right around the time their follower count started heading down. As to why, we can only speculate that it was because they ran a piece that Twitter didn't like.

7/16/09: Twitter's Internal Strategy Laid Bare: To Be "The Pulse Of The Planet."

People have always questioned whether there was a connection between being on the list and not being too critical of Twitter. At this point, there isn't much doubt that the connection is there.