Gawker reporter Ryan Tate was our guest on Rebooting the News today.

 10/4/2010; 6:25:50 PM.   .

New CEO at Twitter.

Media company of the future.

Hey hey we're the hamsters.

Wish a visionary..

Would tell us..

Where we fit in!

 10/4/2010; 4:51:10 PM.   .

I reviewed The Social Network on Friday. I was so-so on it. Didn't think it was fair, didn't particularly like it as a movie.

But as it settled in, one thing became clear -- it really raises the profile of Mark Zuckerberg to a prominent level. Raises him personally above the founders of every other current Silicon Valley high flier. This can't be anything but good for Zuck and his company, and bad for the others.

As Bill Gates puts himself out to pasture, as Steve Jobs is showing his bitter inflexibility, and Google looks more clueless about social networks all the time, there's Zuck, on screen, looking fresh and humbled by the birth experience of his company. But now the birthing is over, and even if people believe the myth that he's an asshole, so what? Did that really hurt his predecessors? Did anyone think Steve Jobs was lovable. Bill Gates? His role model was Mr Burns on The Simpsons. (And Sorkin tells us in the closing scene of the movie that Zuck isn't really an asshole (something we've already figured out) he just tries real hard to seem like one.)

All Zuck (the real one) has to do is show that he can take a joke or a jab and a little criticism and emerge with his sense of humor in tact, and he wins, big. And guess what, that's exactly what he's doing. Good work.

 10/4/2010; 10:55:51 AM.   .

Yesterday I posted an item saying I was looking for NYU's news feeds. I explained where I had looked. Enough time has passed by now that I would have expected a deluge. And one or two snide comments from people saying the main feed was in plain sight, how come I couldn't see it? But nothing like that came.

This is Startup Week at NYU. A lot of professors and almuni will speak to students about the virtues of being an entrepreneur. But always the best way to inspire is by example. Tom Sawyer got a lot of help with his fence painting problem when he illustrated how much fun it was.

It seems to me that NYU could use an RSS-makeover.

How do the East Village bloggers, who seem to resent and fear NYU so, get their information on what the 800-pound gorilla is doing? Why aren't they screaming from the top of village tenements for the feeds.

What do we want? Feeds!! When do we want them? Now!!

This is how you achieve what they call transparency. By being up front with what's going on behind the curtain in the land of Oz.

Meanwhile in Startup-land, while everyone's lining up to the make the Foursquare for apartment rentals in Egypt, shouldn't we be taking care of our own online presence first?

And btw, where is NYU's Twitter feed? Lots of NYU departments have them, but the university itself, nowhere to be found.

 10/4/2010; 8:36:02 AM.   .