And since we — cough — read — cough — the web so you don’t have to, let us present to you the highlights of this natural phenomenon:

photo by Heather Henderson

photo by Jessica Janson

photo by Kristýna Mazúrová

photo by Katerina Karbanova

photo by Adrianne Curry

photo by Ndidi Nwajei

photo by Wei-Te Kao

photo by MyWebs

photo by Kate Sumbler

photo by Jacqui Jackson

photo by contralto

photo by Angela Tait

Not to be outdone, that bombshell Maria Orlova at Hot For Words made her very own #boobquake video to commemorate the occasion.

And, of course, there’s a #boobquake song:

It started with the claim from a cleric in Iran:
loose women bring on earthquakes. Do you think we can?
It wasn’t ’til he said it that we knew we had such power
and now were gonna use it to shake down your ivory tower.

Boobquake! From Purdue to Pensacola!
Bookquake! We’ll rock the Ayatollah!
Boobquake! How is it a sin?
Boobquake! Show a little skin.

If tits can cause an earthquake, how far should we go
to instigate the start of a Mideast volcano?
You taught us, Mr. Cleric, flaunting is the ticket –
if you have a problem, let me show you where to stick it.

Did you participate? Pics or it didn’t happen.

Images credited where appropriate. Banner by Aiste Janciauskaite.

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And now, PutItOn, along with the New York Film Academy is putting on the PiO Picture Show Annual Online Film Festival, which is now accepting short and feature films.

Per the rules, no works that are exclusively pornographic or that promote hate are eligible to enter. Each entrant is allowed to submit one film into the contest. Prizes will be awarded for Best Feature, Best Short and Best Achievement in Acting.

The first round of the competition for best feature and best short film will be, in grand web tradition, determined by viewer votes. The top 10 finalists in each category will then move to round two, where their work will be assessed by a member of The New York Film Academy, PiO’s co-founder Max Fraser, and another industry professional. The award for best achievement in acting will be decided separately by the panel of judges, with all submissions automatically entered for consideration.

Submissions will be accepted until December 31, 2009 and public voting will go on until January 28, 2010. The first-place winners will be announced on February 18, 2010. The prize? A scholarship to the New York Film Academy and $5,000. Second place winners get a HD Pro-sumer digital video cam.

Gear up, Los Angeles. Here’s a shot at the big time–or at least a few more months of rent.

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“You really should,” I tell him. Woolley is on crutches, and I’m convinced that if he did tweet, I’d know why. I ask him about it and he tells me he’s been on crutches for eight months following an accident on his Chopper. He’s in town for the Breeders’ Cup Challenge on Saturday, the qualifying races that precede the Breeders’ Cup happening on November 6th and 7th.

We’re at 30-1, an evening of cocktails and epic noms at the Thompson’s exclusive ABH bi-level rooftop bar, celebrating the second consecutive Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita Park, and supporting The V Foundation for Cancer Research, founded by ESPN and the late Jim Valvano, former basketball coach of North Carolina State University and renown ESPN and ABC broadcaster. With me is Peter Rotondo (@retro411), VP of media and entertainment for the Breeders’ Cup, and directly across from us stands Bruce Jenner, the decathlon gold medalist of Keeping Up With The Kardashians fame.

ESPN’s Kenny Mayne just finished speaking and everyone is talking about the races—but there’s a lot of talk about Twitter, too. So much, in fact, that if you didn’t know this was a Breeders’ Cup soirée, you’d mistake the sports crowd for a group of enthusiastic members of L.A. tech.

That’s the idea—the Breeders’ Cup is organizing their first ever Tweeters’ Cup, a tweet-up front-side at the Seabiscuit Court by the paddock on the Oak Tree grounds at Santa Anita on November 6th. It’s going to be a day at the races—microblogging-style.

Greg Avioli (@GregAvioli), president and CEO of the Breeders’ Cup, comes over. He’s convinced he gives bad tweet. I outline some quick pointers about the art of conversation in 140 characters or less. He’s stumped by the balance one must learn to strike between being entertaining and keeping within a company brand. Ah, the dilemma of our times.

I tell him we’ll give him a crash course at the Tweeters’ Cup. Are you in?

30-1 at ABH at the Thompson Beverly Hills

Oak Tree Executive Vice President and Director Sherwood Chillingworth and Peter Rotondo.

The wheel of prizes--among them a $10,000 trip from Sentient Jet.

Chris Abramson won the $10,000 prize.

ESPN's Kenny Mayne.

With Chip Woolley!

Photo of horse by Suzy Holm, iPhone by Scott Beale.

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Scott Graham wants to revolutionize the way companies hire people. In what could be one of the most brilliant marketing campaigns, the CEO of XPACS, a service company that provides personal assistants and concierge services worldwide, is looking to fill three positions using social media platforms like Twitter.

Welcome to the XPACS Dream Job Challenge. They don’t care where you live, they don’t care about your level of education, and they don’t care abour your past professional experience–or lack of it. What they want to see is the way you strategize using your existing social media accounts to market their company and the results you get from your efforts.

Here’s the kicker–unlike Murphy Goode, who ran a similar dream job contest but muddled the details of the selection process, XPACS is up-front: for them, it’s in the numbers. That is, the number of retweets you get, the number of times you use the hashtag #xpacsdreamjob, and the number of people you recruit to sign up to use their services (just to qualify for one of the positions, for instance, you need at least 50 people to sign up).

XPACS also notes that all those who participate will be compensated. If you don’t get the job but signed up some people, you will get a 47 percent commission on every $40 monthly membership you scored–not bad.

It’s a good idea and has the potential to put XPACS on the map if they get people to participate, but, like most sane people, I’m concerned about how badly this is going to clog my Twitter stream. All I can say is best of luck to all of you who undertake the task–I hope you’re creative enough to get people behind you and not inadvertently inspire a massive block campaign against your annoying, spamming ass.

Photo by Oscar.

Previously on lalawag:

• Bit.ly Bites off Two More Characters
• Timeline: Le Twitter Hack
• Top 10 Ways to Find Deals Online

Today was a little different, but only in tone–the conference kicked off with Tony Robbins (@tonyrobbins), the acclaimed self-help guru and motivational speaker.

As we listened to him speak and speak, pausing every 30 seconds to deliver one of his patented “Can I get an AYE!” (Yes, Captain, my Captain, you can…) a few things started to become clear.

I know a few other people have said this before, so forgive me for paraphrasing people like Peter Shankman (@skydiver) and Robert Scoble (@scobleizer): in terms of connecting with people, social media is not the end all be all. Twitter is not the end all be all.

What does matter, and what we took away not only from Tony JUST THROW THOSE PANTIES ON THE STAGE, LADIES Robbins, but from virtually all the other speakers, is that it all comes down to four key things: authenticity, trust, transparency, and relevance.

It’s not the technology. It’s the connection.

It doesn’t matter if it’s Twitter, Facebook, or a freaking handshake, It’s honesty. It’s the way of the world since the dawn of fire. First guy invented fire. He sold it. Someone else realized they could do the same thing. Did he lose market share? Who gives a crap? It was fire, and it was honest. It was hot, it burned meat, and kept you warm. There. Honesty.

Same thing today. You have a product? Make it what your consumers want. Make your customers into addicts, and they’ll be there for life–and they’ll use these social media tools to do your own marketing for you.

And guess what? It’s no different than what the first guy who got off the first Zeppelin ride did, He got off the ride, adjusted his hat, and told anyone who was in earshot “that airship is freakin’ great! They’re gonna make a heavy metal band out of that name one day!”

Now, we’re just doing it through electrons.

So, Robbin’s takeaway? No difference. Be honest.

That’s something we’ll jump up and scream “Aye!” about.

Wriiten with Peter Shankman, sitting at a table off to the side, while giggling at lolcats.

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“A lifelong dream has come true,” Jeffrey said in a blog post announcing the news. “I’ve known this was coming for a few weeks now, but the reality of it finally hit today, and it is amazing.”

This is a one-book deal. “In this financial climate, publishers are very risk-averse, whis is why they didn’t go for the series: the want to see what book one will do first,” says Jeffrey. The book will be released in hardcover in the spring of 2011 and Jeffrey will be going on a multi-city tour after its release.

The first time I met Jeffrey–at a New Year’s Eve party at Paige Craig’s house, of course–Jeffrey was carrying a backpack full of copies of this same book. He let me page through one and we spent some time talking about it. It was endearing to watch him watch the book like a hawk. This series is his brainchild and I’m glad that Harper Collins has chosen to make the investment. They won’t be disappointed: there is a reason why the book has been downloaded over two million times since it was first released in 2007.

Congratulations, Mark. You’ve earned it. Don’t you dare leave us hanging for book three much longer.

Curious? Re-writes and edits are in the works, but the original book one and two of the Max Quick series are available from maxquickseries.com–they’re only there until this weekend, so hurry if you don’t want to sit around waiting until 2011!

Previously on lalawag:

• Plancast Announces Widgets and API
• This Weekend in Twitpics
• Evening Tech Headlines For March 23rd, 2011: “Father of OS X” Leaves Apple, Yahoo Debuts “Future of Search”

Want to see more? LAWeekly and TechZulu have lists of panels of interest to SoCal tech.

(Photo by Thomas Totz)

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Various sources online are currently reporting on exploding iPhones, iPods and iTouches.

In France, a teen was injured when his girlfriend’s iPhone exploded, Digital Trends reports. His mother, Marie-Dominique Kolega, told the AFP that the iPhone made a hissing noise before exploding and hitting the teen on the head.

According to The Times, earlier this year, a mother in the United States filed against Apple after her son’s iTouch exploded in his pocket and burned his leg.

In the Netherlands, a man’s iPhone spontaneously combusted in his car, burning a hole through the seat, reports the iPhone Niews Blog. Check out this photo below.

The Times Online also reports on Ken Stanborough in England, whose daughter’s iPod Touch also made a hissing sound before exploding. When Stanborough contacted Apple about the device, he was told that they’d gladly give him a refund–but only if he signed a settlement that required him to keep silent on the matter.

The Times elaborates on Apple’s awesome handling of these disturbing incidents:

Last week it emerged that Apple had tried to keep a number of cases where its iPod digital music players had started to smoke, burst into flames and even burned their owners, out of the public eye.

An American reporter obtained 800 pages of documentation on the cases from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) following a Freedom of Information Act request in that country. However, she was unable to get hold of the documents for months after “Apple’s lawyers filed exemption after exemption.”

Way to go Apple!

According to the Dutch iPhone Niews Blog, the European Commission is now seeking clarification from Apple in regard to the incidents that have been reported in the EU. Apple has yet to make a public statement on any of the incidents.

Does this make you think twice about how close you keep your Apple devices?

Photos by Stephen Heywood and Tree and J. Hensdill. Special thanks to @melissabarlow for the tip.

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Micah doesn’t disagree that this is what #followfriday has become. And while many suggestions have been made about solving the spamfest, none of them have really stuck. Every Friday, as sure as the sun, the senseless lists of people begin to clutter our streams. Who are these people?!

And forget trying to check your @replies on Fridays. That’s just an invitation to see yourself squeezed like a sardine among other Twitter users who, more often than not, have about as much in common with you as an apple has with a machine gun.

So how do you turn the oil tanker? Mike Prasad (@mikeprasad) has an idea: Follow Friday Fact (#FFFact).

Here’s how it works:

Instead of listing all the people you think rock in one tweet or (God help us) a series of tweets, you name a single user and list an informative tidbit about them.

“Most people didn’t follow @micah’s original format of including at least a category or key words about the person being #FF,” Mike tells me. “With #FFFact, you learn something about the person mentioned. Coming up with a good #FFFact is surprisingly hard, but it forces you to really think about who you #FFFact and therefore the recommendation has much more value.”

I never check #followfriday recommendations because I have no time to click the hundreds of people that are listed every Friday to see what they’re about and discern whether they’re follow-worthy. #FFFact does the job for me. And checking my @replies for #FFFacts? That’s a delicious new dimension to ego-surfing–and I can always roll with that.

Micah digs it. Do you?

Photo is comprised of Twitter avatars. Top: @mikeprasad, @micah, @seanpercival, @shiralazar, @heathermeeker, @theman, @missro, @dmosites. Middle: @MarshaCollier, @wmmarc, @natasha, @haileybright, @caseymckinnon, @rudy, @lauriepercival, @DvinMsM. Bottom: @drew, @alexiatsotsis, @paigecraig, @knowisayin, @iconverdge, @michaelpilla, @joannalord, @gammill.

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The answer is annoyingly simple: because the stuff we’re making is, more often than not, not just for the tech sector. It’s for the web-using public. And fifty percent of this public is women.

But shouldn’t we be looking for “the best” and not limiting ourselves to people’s genders? Good question. For starters, it’s a fallacy to assume that a long conference resume makes someone the best. Secondly, gender equality (or racial equality, for that matter) doesn’t mean we’re all the same. It’s these differences in perspective that can help those of us who attend these conferences develop products that make sense–for everyone.

OK, fine. So what, then?

Allyson Kapin has devised a great list over at Fast Company about what a conference can do to ensure diversity. Here’s the fast and furious version:

Organizations to contact for suggestions on speakers:
Girls In Tech
Anita Borg Institute
She’s Geeky
Women Who Tech
National Women of Color Technology Conference
Women In Technology International
Women 2.0
Social Media Women of Color
The National Center for Women and IT
BlogHer

List of women to watch:
Women 2 Follow

Online, searchable speaker resources:
Speakers Wiki
GeekSpeakPR

Are you a woman in tech? Get on the lists and sites! Approach conferences in your industry with panels! Join organizations to get yourself noticed! Conference programmers can only do so much if we’re not being proactive about speaking at these events. Get on it!

Photo by Frank Gruber.

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Enter Help A Reporter Out, or HARO. This is a sweet little service that ties journalists and bloggers with the sources they need–for free. Yeah, you read that right: free.

Here’s how it works: sources, whatever their field, want publicity. They sign up to receive three daily e-mails from HARO with queries from reporters and bloggers. When a query comes along that’s in the source’s area, they answer, and the journalist or blogger turns around and includes the source in their story. The writers meet their deadlines and the sources get exposure.

The bigger the Rolodex, the better the writer, they say. Sure thing–and your Rolodex just got significantly fatter.

And who’s responsible for all of this? Meet Peter Shankman, the CEO of The Geek Factory, a PR and marketing firm in New York City, and founder of HARO.

Some Background with Peter Shankman

1. How did it occur to you to start HARO?

I know a lot of reporters. Over time, I’d help them whenever they’d ask. “Peter, I need a source.” I never asked for anything in return. It was simply good karma. Good karma begets good karma. We’re now the largest source repository in the world for any kind of media, including bloggers.

2. When you say “everyone is an expert” do you suggest everyone should be signing up–even my little sister in college? Do you take queries from small time bloggers?

Everyone IS an expert at something. Your little sister might be brilliant at knowing every episode of the Simpsons, or a whiz at astronomy. Whatever it is, someone, somewhere is writing a story about it, and needs a source. We take queries from major media such as the NY Times, CNN, and The Today Show, and small bloggers such as random entertainment and healthcare blogs.

3. How do you manage to condense the number of questions you must get into three e-mails per day with less than 50 queries each?

We’re over 100,000 members strong, as well as have 30,000 journalists who have used the service since we started it a little over a year ago. We base everything on a deadline system. Queries come in all the time, we organize them via deadline so we never overwhelm the reader. I never, ever expected this. I’m thrilled by it every single day. I’m like a kid in a candy store. Or more technically, me in a candy store.

4. Are you planning on expanding the service?

We are planning on expanding. We just hired a new COO to help us grow. Expect to see the list separated into specific categories, so you can sign up for as many or as few as you like. Expect new implementations to make it easier to find the queries you’re looking for. Heck, expect an iPhone app. :)

5. What’s the business model there?

Each HARO list has a small, 5-6 line text ad at the top of it. Those ads have turned HARO from a fun little idea into an-over-one-million-dollar-per-year-in-revenue business in just over 14 months. I’d say we’re onto something.

Photo by Ged Carroll.

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Well, now you too can take a breather. Introducing one of the most shameless ways to get off scot free: The Office Kid.

For $19.95 (plus shipping), you get to pick the gender, name and ethnicity of your bundle of imaginary joy, who arrives in the form of a framed photo and a very realistic poorly-scribbled drawing you can use to decorate the office. Also included in the kit is a list of useful excuses to get out of just about anything–and for a little extra you get a fake doctor’s note, more artwork, and a picture of the kid’s sports team–with you Photoshopped right in!

Can’t you just see me with little Helvetica at the gun range?!

Yeah, me neither. Thank god for Office Kid and fabulous women who know how to call a workday quits early to brainstorm–over happy hour margaritas–about what really matters in life: having fun.

Photos by Karen and Sam.

Previously on lalawag:

• Apple’s Final Cut Pro X Costs Less, Does More
• The 10 Most Significant Gadgets of the Last Year
• Welcome to lalawag

Enter tr.im, comfortably short, but unlike is.gd, which is also short, tr.im came with a very seductive extra: the ability to help you track your click-throughs. Sadly, after some attempts to monetize or sell, tr.im has bitten the dust.

So what equally short shorteners are left and what can they do?

And currently in private beta is LA tech’s own grf.me, a URL shortener that’s part of Brooks Bayne’s larger social mapping effort, The Graph:

What do you use and why do you like it?

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Here are our favorites:

Neil Patel

I’m kinda a big deal

Tech cred: angel Investor, co-founder of CrazyEgg and KissMetrics

Age range: 20 – 25

Followers on Twitter: 8,685

Facebook friends: 1,948

e-Stalk themz: Twitter, Facebook

Notes: By far the most accomplished fetus of the tech space, Neil can easily get a girl on page one of any Google result–ALL NIGHT LONG.

Jason Nazar

I’m not dating Shira Lazar!

Tech cred: CEO of DocStoc

Age range: 25 – 30

Followers on Twitter: 2,179

Facebook friends: 2,255

e-Stalk themz: Twitter, Facebook

Notes: A devout workaholic, Jason always finds time to give back to the local tech community and make appearances around town with some of the most notorious L.A. tech personalities. Likely to use Docstoc to locate a prenup should things go well.

Paige Craig

Looking for my Tomb Raider, a real-life Lara Croft

Tech cred: angel investor, co-founder of the Lincoln Group

Age range: 30 – 35

Followers on Twitter: 1,183

Facebook friends: 734

e-Stalk themz: Twitter, Facebook

Notes: Works hard, plays harder. This avowed adrenaline junkie is most likely to indulge your weirder variety of sexual paraphilias–while hanging off the face of a cliff at some exotic locale, and live-tweeting.

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Laura Fitton was one of the first people I connected with on Twitter some two and a half years ago. It was through her and those I picked up and connected with in her tribe that I learned about the real power of this social network. It came as no surprise to me, then, that when the plans for a Twitter for Dummies book were announced last year, Fitton was spearheading the effort.

“The thing that’s most worthwhile is to step back and kind of forget that it’s a publishing environment,” Fitton said. “People talk about it being microblogging and, you know, OK, we’re just pushing stuff out there–we’re really having a conversation and what it amounts to is a massive, massive flow of information between all these overlapping networks of loosely connected people all over the globe. And so there is tons of news flowing in there all the time, there’s tons of consumer data, here is tons personality, friends being made, there’s relationships being struck up.”

The book came out on July 6. In grand social media tradition, the book was a joint effort, a masterpiece of crowdsourcing and putting heads together. This book combines the savvy of some of Twitter’s best and most high-powered users and distills it into a guide for anyone to understand.

AV Flox and Laura Fitton at the August Capital party

“Have folks around the office who still just don’t get it?” Fitton asks. “Give them a copy. As we’ve said many, many times, it’s not at all unusual for Twitter not to make sense to people immediately. One of the single best things anyone can do is explain a specific use of Twitter that makes sense to the person you are trying to convince. We included lots and lots of great Twitter success stories in the book for just this reason. There’s nothing at all ‘dumb’ about looking at Twitter and not immediately seeing the value.”

This little jewel is just what you need to explain your addiction—from showing n00bs around the interface to relating pointers from the pros and discussing the uses and how to develop your “Twitter voice,” this book has everything the curious need to get started.

Not sold? Check out the community that was put together to discuss the content of the book. The site is replete with tips and ideas, neatly categorized for easy browsing.

Order it now from Amazon for $14.95. Or get the Kindle edition for $3.99.

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The Twitter status blog laid it out like this:

For some time, the follower and following counts we display have been incorrect for some folks. We’re soon to push a change that will address this issue. This means that the count you see in your sidebar should match what you see on your follower and following pages.

However, a consequence of this change is that follower counts will drop for some people. In particular, those with large followings may see significant changes as we correct for spam accounts and data inconsistencies. No legitimate followings should be affected—we’re just cleaning up artifacts in the system.

That’s cool. Less spam. Of course, if you’re one of those people whose self-esteem is linked to your follower count, this may be a sad time for you. Of course, you could look at it on the bright side and take the opportunity to unfollow all those annoying people whose feelings you’ve been trying to spare–until now!

UNFOLLOW FRIDAY!

(Photo from tribbleagency.com)

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LEAVE HER ALONE! You are lucky she even performed for you BASTARDS! LEAVE IJ ALONE!

As Paige Craig found out, tweeting about reaching a benchmark in followers can result in some annoying follow/unfollow behavior.

Jessica Gottlieb is not sugar and spice and everything nice all the time. When it comes to people with whom this power mommy blogger disagrees, Jessica is not afraid to tweet below the belt.

Lucky for gossip-mongering tweeps, 1938media founder Loren Feldman doesn’t let anything slide.

Erin has some serious assets.

I don’t know what Natasha is talking about. There’s no better way to start a threesome than by getting flogged for breakfast.

(Photo from Chris-Wallace.com)

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I have the iPhone OS 3.0 software upgrade, which doesn’t come out until June 17th.

To all my Blackberry friends who are always gloating about the copy and pasting: suck it. The software update enables you to copy and paste. It also includes the capability to send multimedia messages right from the MMS screen (which AT&T will implement later this summer, yeah, I know, FAIL. Well, it is AT&T).

But there’s MORE! The new upgrade allows users to perform searches over most everything in your iPhone–calendar appointments, text message content, notes and e-mail. You need never go through endless texts in your lovers’ phones to see if they’re sexting someone else. Just run a search for whatever he or she screams during orgasm and voila.

Fear not, ye unfaithful, the new upgrade allows you to delete individual messages out of text transcripts! Sneaky, Charlie, SNEAKY!

Other things included in the OS 3.0 upgrade:

• landscape keyboard for e-mails and texts
• forward texts (i.e., show friends how much of an epic fail other people are at sexting!)
• voice recorder
• Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync capabilities within the calendar
• the ability to buy, download and watch movies, TV shows and music videos from the iTunes store

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They call kirtsy the woman’s answer to Digg. Now, I know plenty of women who use and enjoy Digg, both for getting content and for making their content available, but if there is one place where kirtsy transcends the popular social bookmarking site, it’s in its categories.

Digg, like most other social bookmarking sites, has as main categories technology, world and business, science, gaming, lifestyle, entertainment, sports, and offbeat. kirtsy, on the other hand, has arts and entertainment, design and crafts, family and parenting, fashion and style, food and home, internet and technology, mind body and spirit, and travel and leisure.

If these are the sorts of things you’re looking for, or if you write about subjects in these categories, then kirtsy is the site for you.

kirtsy is the brainchild of three women who, while epically bored during the 2007 Super Bowl, decided to create a destination for the kind of content that they were after.

The women behind kirtsy today are a former art director at a New York ad agency, an ad agency VP, the co-founder of LEAP Design in North Carolina, and one of 2008′s 50 most powerful women in social media.

kirtsy came to my attention last year following a branding nightmare, when Skirt! magazine threatened to sue them. You see, kirtsy was originally sk*rt. Under threat of lawsuit, kirtsy called on its users to help come up with a name change. And so sk*rt was reborn as kirtsy.

As a sex and relationship columnist at BlogHer, I consider my target audience women. I’ve submitted one of my pieces, Could It Be You’re Not The Relationship Kind? We’ll see how it does.

Have you tried kirtsy?

Already got an account? Add me and Laurie Percival.

(Photo from webshots.com)

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This bodes well for people who use these events to their advantage by actively seeking out new contacts in their industries, but what about the organizers of the events? In the past week, I’ve seen a couple of events moved to avoid overlapping—often to no avail.

I contacted the executive director and head of the LA Chapter of Girls In Tech, Robyn Cohen about the issue.

“This month was tough,” she confessed in an e-mail. “There was a lot going on and a lot of overlap. The best thing I can do is reach out to the people I know: Kevin Winston who does Digital LA, Jackie Peters who heads up the Social Media Club LA, etc, to make sure when [Girls In Tech] are planning our events, they don’t have anything going on. This way everyone has a chance to shine, if you will, promote their event, and get as many attendees as possible.”

She had a positive perspective on the occasional overlaps, saying that this forced event promoters to seek out new blood in the industries to which they cater, which is great for attendees. After all, how much help is a networking event where you already know most of the people in attendance?

Not much help at all.

Here’s how you can maximize your event-attending potential:

• Constantly seek out new groups and organizations that are beneficial to your endeavors. Check publications in your industry as well as Twitter. Of course, the king of event scheduling is Facebook. Connecting with relevant groups and organizations on Facebook is a great way to get notifications about upcoming events. Maintaining your social calendar has never been easier.
• Check the event descriptions. What’s being talked about? An organization may be relevant to your industry, but the scope is always wide. It’s one thing to wish to branch out and constantly learn new things, but there’s no reason to make yourself sit through a panel about something that’s going to bore you to tears. Of course, there is also the opposite danger of settling into a pattern of familiar topics. If all you’re doing is going to Using Twitter For Marketing events, are you really advancing yourself? Your time is valuable, treat it that way. Always ask: “what do I get out of this?”
• Keep an eye on the attendee list. No, I don’t mean checking to see if your friends are going to be there. Following your friends around is the easiest way to fail to get anything done. Stake out the territory on your own, look for people who are making strides in the industry. Who is speaking? Who has RSVPd? How many new faces do you see? What are their networks? Fun is important, yes, and there are plenty of events for that, but when it comes to networking, it’s all about who you don’t know yet.

What’s the biggest determining factor for you in choosing which events to attend?

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“If you’re tweeting at a rate of once every four minutes, how do you have time to do anything else?” he asked. “Has Twitter replaced sex?”

D00d. If you have to ask, UR DOIN IT RONG.

The truth is, Twitter is probably the best way to hook up. Old-school methods of getting to know someone through their blogs and Facebook profiles is a large investment as far as time goes–and time is a luxury not all of us have. With Twitter, you can find and engage hundreds of people in your network. So how do you do it?

Represent

Flirting with a picture of an animal, painting, Second Life character or a logo is no fun. Plus, if you’re going to hook up, they’re going to see your face eventually, so get with it. Add a bio and a webpage, too. No one really reads that much any more, but no one wants to interact with a ghost, either.  

Give good tweet

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist (in most cases), to get someone to get down and dirty with you, but it helps to appear to have a functional brain. Don’t sweat it, it’s only 140 characters, not a thesis. Mix it up by retweeting things that interest you, or link to articles you’ve found online that may be useful or interesting to others (extra points if they wrote it, or if you are retweeting them).

Follow-fail

Don’t freak out if he or she doesn’t follow you back right away. People on Twitter are increasingly looking to establish better ties with their networks, so the selection process is becoming more intensive. Whatever you do, do not @reply them asking them to follow back or wondering why you can’t direct message (DM) them. That’s pushy–especially if you have engaged one another only a handful of times or, worse, not at all. Whatever you do, do not use the instant DM for follow-backs linking to your blog. No one likes a form letter–it can get you unfollowed stat.

Pay attention

Twitter enables you to see everything a person is willing to show you, which in this overshare generation is everything from what they eat to where they hang out, what they think about current events and what they’re into. Pay attention. Why? Think about it this way: I get two DMs at once. One asks a generic “how are you?” and another incorporates bacon and physics. It’s not your average conversation opener, but if you’re me, it’s spot on. All it takes is a quick browse at a person’s profile.

Reply, but not excessively

My friends and I call them “the bunny-boilers.” These are the tweeps that @reply you excessively throughout the day, to say hello, to ask how you’re doing, to tell you what they ate, to say good night, etc. Yes, it gets you noticed–but never in a good way. You should engage, but keep it on topic at least until you’re followed back.

DM with care

OK, so the crush is following you back. That means you can DM. You can get personal now, like ask them what song is playing in their head at the moment or how their weekend in Vegas went. Do not be a bunny-boiling, DM-abuser. If you want to ask them out, do so with care–do they have a busy weekend ahead? Are they even in town? Just because they’re following back does not mean you shouldn’t pay attention. Check them out before you DM. It’s nice to be thought about, but having someone ask you out while you’re, say, going through a break-up, is probably not the wisest idea.

Get flirty

Depending on who you’re following, you’ll know if it’s OK to flirt in the public timeline or keep it private. Some people use Twitter for business as well as socializing; if this is the case, you’ll want to keep it private. Don’t forget that if you move in the same circle or share an industry, your back-and-forths will be broadcast to your entire network of mutuals–and who wants that? Not to mention there is always the possibility of rejection–do you want a “no, thanks” broadcast to the public? Didn’t think so.

Take it up a notch

You’ve had public discussions, you’ve flirted on DM–now what? Now you tell them you’re into them, of course. Whether you should flat out say you want to bang them silly is up to you (and the preferences of the person you’re crushing on), but a simple, “you’re fun, let’s take this to the analog–drinks?” can work just as well. If you’ve done a good job flirting, you’ve already teased the hell out of them. And if you’ve paid attention, you know just which bar to take them and what to order before they even take a seat in front of you.

Enjoy.

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They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn…

– Jack Kerouac, On The Road

And burn they do. No one is entirely sure how Kurt Daradics (@KurtyD), Jolie O’Dell (@JolieODell), and Jonathan Dingman (@Dingman) ended up in that car, but what we do know is that their magical adventure (aptly named Roadtwip), has already taken them across Tennessee and Missouri, and brought them enough fodder to write their own hipster classic–fodder that already includes a run-in with the police, which is not entirely shocking, considering our favorite jailbird is on board.

For more shenanigans from our three beatnik jellybeans, check out the Roadtwip blog.

(Photo by Jolie O’Dell)

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This is position two. There are nine, but two is my favorite in the way of presenting oneself as a sexual offering, and quite possibly the way I would start my air sex routine, should I ever partake in the competition.

They have those, you know. Think air guitar, only instead of rocking out, you’re rocking out with your cock out, so to speak.

Like most other bizarre/awesome sex-related phenomena, air sex got its start in Japan when a group of bored dudes with no girlfriends decided simulation was better than nothing. A video of their shenanigans went viral, the blogosphere and press picked it up, and less than a year later, Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse was holding regular competitions, which quickly became sold-out events.

This year, they’re taking the show on the road to 15 North American cities, among them: San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles. The finalists will all converge to fight for the title of Air Sex World Champion.

Come on, you know you want to.

Details

Date: Friday, June 26, 2009

Time: 6:00pm

Location:
The Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026

Tickets:
Ticket information will be made available at on the Air Sex World Championships Tickets section later this month.

Registration:
If you are interested in competing in the LA championship, please contact chris@airsexworldchampionships.com

Rules:
Time: Contestants have a maximum of 2 minutes to perform an air sex routine. This can include all phases of an air sex encounter: meeting, seduction, foreplay and intercourse, or you can simply cut to the chase.

Music: Competitors must perform to music, you can either bring a CD of your performance track with you, or you can choose from our selection of air sex music. You may also include an audio prelude to your performance, maximum of 30 seconds.

Other Rules: Unlike air guitar, there are not many other rules. Props are allowed, teams are allowed, talking is allowed. The only important rule is that all sexual climaxes must be simulated, not real.

Complete tour schedule.

Keep up with Air Sex World Championship news on Twitter by following @airsex.

(Photo from airsexworldchampionships.com)

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Next Tuesday, May 12, 2009, will mark the second annual Women Who Tech TeleSummit (a conference held via phone and web), and will bring together hundreds of women from all over the US and abroad, across an array of disciplines, for a unique lineup of panels.  From a look at the Feminine Mystique v2.0 and breaking through the digital ceiling, to diversity barriers in social networks and web marketing during a recession.

Details

Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Time: 8:00am

Location:
Online

Registration:
$10 to register for a panel–the rest are free!

Register for any of the panels here! Simply select and pay for one; after you are done, you will be given the option to select any other panels you wish to attend.

Panel highlights:

Tuesday, May 12th
8:00am PDT
In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan pointed the pointed spotlight on the unfulfilled housewife, a woman longing get out of her kitchen and into the board room. Almost 50 years later, we may have traded one mystique for another. Now we’re asked to give everything to our jobs AND to our families, yet we often don’t get the same rewards and reverence that our male counterparts do.
Panelists: Leslie Hawthorn, Google; Joan Blades, Moveon.org and Moms Rising; Tracy Viselli, Reno Fabulous Media.

Tuesday, May 12th
12:00pm PDT
Innovation and Tech Career Reinvention
This panel will cover seven career reinvention actions you must take now: sniffing out the projects that play to your strengths (and move your career forward), career migration and cutover (what to bring along and what to leave behind), succession planning as part of your reinvention strategy (when does it make sense?), and more!
Panelists: Christine Adzich, Big Picture Productions; Sheryl Chamberlain, EMC; Megan Fitzgerald, Career By Choice; Nancy Wheeler, Intel.

Tuesday, May 12th
12:00pm PDT
Launching Your Own Startup
Do you have a fantastic idea for a start-up but just don’t understand what it really takes to launch it and be successful? How do you fund it? How do you choose the right business partners? Check out this soup to nuts panel featuring an all-star lineup of women who have successfully launched their own startups and have lots of wisdom and advice to share.
Panelists: Rashmi Sinha, SlideShare; Amy Muller, Get Satisfaction; Lisa Stone, BlogHer.

Full agenda here.

(Photo by saar*)

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As of the writing of this piece, Kutcher (@aplusk) has 1,053,234 followers, with pwned CNN Breaking News (@CNNBRK) at 1,028,032. Twitter has broken a record—and it’s just beginning. Six hours ago, Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) sent out her first tweet. She’s now tweeted a total of six times and accrued over 150,000 followers.

CNN reported on the milestones at Twitter (“a once-cultish site,” LOL), quoting Andrew Cherwenka, Huffington Post contributor and Trapeze.com developer: “A lot of people are saying this is going to be the death of Twitter, and I don’t understand that at all. It’s just another stage in Twitter’s acceleration.”

With all the changes happening at Twitter right now, and all the bugs that come with them, do you think the micro-blogging platform’s infrastructure will be able to support the mass influx of fans that the heavy celebrity presence is going to bring?

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“This is an excellent opportunity for anyone with a blog or anyone thinking of starting a blog,” writes SMCLA’s Geoff Brown. “We started a discussion board topic in the SMCLA Facebook Group for anyone in the SMCLA group with a blog who would like to take on the 31 day challenge. The discussion group is for SMCLA bloggers to share their experiences, call upon others in the group for help, or simply show off their awesome work!”

The SMCLA blog will be highlighting the efforts of bloggers in LA tech, so if any of you are undertaking the 31 Day to a Better Blog Challenge, drop by the group board and let them know what you’re working on.

Get to know them:

Social Media Club is an international organization with local chapters across the US and around the world.

Join the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog discussion on Facebook.

Follow @smc_la on Twitter.

(Photo by: Wm. Marc Salsberry)

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This April 6, Darren Rowse of ProBlogger is launching his biennial blogging project 31 Days to a Better Blog. The project seeks to assist bloggers of all walks and niches to focus their efforts in order to make their blogs more effective.

Think of it like blogging school. Each day beginning on Monday, April 6, Rowse will create a post on ProBlogger that will consist of a lesson and an assignment.

“The idea is that often teaching remains in the realm of theory and doesn’t actually prompt those digesting it to do something,” Rowse writes in his introductory post. “This project is more about doing than learning. I hope you will learn, but to be honest, if you’ve been blogging for a while some of what we’ll cover many will have heard before—but this project will give you a framework and hopefully some inspiration to put what you know into action.”

Topics will include creating content, interacting with readers, finding new readers, using effective design, and using effective tools, among others.

To participate, all you have to do is visit ProBlogger daily for the updates. Of course, actually registering for the contest will enable Rowse to add you to his 31 Days mailing list and pressure you to make good on your commitment to improving your blog with daily e-mail reminders—something I know for a fact I am going to need.

“Sometimes signing up for something is important in making us accountable to do what we say we’ll do,” Rowse says in his blog.

The 31 Day challenge is not limited to April. Registering at any other time in the year will immediately trigger the e-mails that went out during the original challenge, with links to all the posts as well as the extra information that Rowse plans to include in those reminders.

“At the end of the 31 days I’m not planning on sending too many more e-mails,” Rowse assures participants in his blog. “I may add a few more tasks over time but the daily e-mails will stop… you’re welcome to unsubscribe if it isn’t meeting your needs.”

Up for the challenge? I am.

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“Coming Correct” in Self-Promotion and Other Tidbits from E! Online’s Leslie Gornstein
by AV Flox

While Celebrity gossip blogs have existed for a while and Hulu, which brings film and television to computers everywhere, won best of show for film and TV at the South by Southwest: Interactive awards this year, in general, the merging of Hollywood and the web has been slow and clumsy.

Enter Leslie Gornstein, the Answer Bitch for E! Online. After working at a start-up that failed and spending some years freelancing, Gornstein got a column online when an editor at E! approached her in 2004.

“He was looking for a sassier, angrier ‘Ask Marilyn’ character,” Gornstein explained over coffee at Caffe Luxxe in Brentwood, where she met with me, Laurie Percival, editor-in-chief of Lalawag and Macala Wright, director of marketing and PR for 1928 Jewelry.

“He said, ‘I’m looking for someone to be the answer bitch, you can be the answer bitch,’” Gornstein recalled. “I said ‘all right.’”

Thus, the entertainment question and answer column ‘Ask The Answer Bitch’ was born. Gornstein never looked back. After living and breathing the celebrity lifestyle for four years, writing a book was natural progression. Her book The A-List Playbook, was released by Skyhorse Publishing last month.

“Despite what’s going on in technology right now and despite the ways that you can push yourself out there to a lot of people, people still see a book as a calling card,” Gornstein said. “I learned some really fascinating basic facts about Hollywood. But there was no compendium of it anywhere—the fact that celebrities have three nannies per child, the fact the average celebrity spends an hour a day with their child, and maybe three to four during a vacation period, the fact that most celebrities get 20,000 dollars a month of free stuff—and the fact that’s how you can gauge if they’re A-list or not. I wanted to put it in a survival guide format because I thought that was the most fun way to read it. But really it’s a window for the rest of us about how those people really live.”

“Are you using social media to promote your book?” Lalawag’s Laurie Percival asked.

“Everything that has an internet connection is now my bitch when it comes to promoting my book,” Gornstein responded, laughing. “Facebook, MySpace—not so much, there is something really disco about that. It looks like a Lebanese disco whenever I go on there! I can’t deal with that. So Facebook, Twitter, E! Online—even World of Warcraft. If it has a line out to the world, it’s my bitch.”

Gornstein, who started tweeting as @answerbitch only last November has almost 2,000 followers. She follows almost everyone back.

Macala Wright can’t get over the information saturation that comes with following that many people on Twitter. She confessed she’d pulled a Loic just a few weeks ago to make her stream more manageable and reflected on how annoyed some people got when they were unfollowed.

“Someone has decided following everyone back is Tweetiquette and you know what? I think people are taking things way too personal,” Gornstein replied. “Because, what does that mean when I don’t return someone’s phone call? Sometimes I’m just not going to return a phone call.”

“I think about this all the time, too,” Laurie Percival pitched in. “Do I have to reply to every @message? How do people do this all day long? There’s no way!”

She described with awe the people who sent personalized direct messages (DMs) after she followed them.

“I just don’t know how they have time,” she said. “So I just don’t do it.”

“You could send out auto-DMs.” Gornstein suggested.

We looked at her with horror. I think one of us even gasped.

“The only reason I think an auto-DM would be offensive, and I got one of these recently, ‘thank you for following, be sure to link my blog’—that’s not cool,” Gornstein defended her position. “When people follow me I send out an auto-message that says, ‘Welcome to the all American festival that is me!’ I don’t see that as a particularly obnoxious thing to do.”

Gornstein seems to have an inherent understanding of how to work new media and leverage the power of real-time user feedback.

“I’m really careful to do it,” she said about self-promotion. “You have to come correct about it, as the drug dealers say. You come to people correct and you say ‘yes, I’m pimping now,’ or I’ll make it participatory and say, ‘correct me if I’m wrong…’ and people like that. It’s conversation. I think that’s respectful.”

She limits the bulk of her self-promotion to Sundays and constantly invites input from her followers and readers. To a large extent, the web has allowed her following to grow and thrive.

“On the internet we have the concept of microcelebrity—being famous for fifteen people, as Momus said in the early 90s,” I told her. “Do you think of yourself as one?”

“I’m definitely famous for fifteen people,” she responded. “My husband loves me!”

“Do you think microcelebrities could apply some of the knowledge found in your book?”

“No,” she said, laughing. “You really need to be visible planet-wide to be able to sling this kind of power around.”

“So you don’t think Julia Allison could get through airport security without having to remove her stilettos?”

“No,” she replied. “Microcelebrities are most famous to themselves. Without the internet, would these people be famous?”

Sounds like a challenge to me. Hear that, NonSociety?

Gornstein pointed to a copy of her book on the coffee table, buried under iPhones, packs of cigarettes and idle Flip cams.

“These people are all cross-media megastars,” she said. “If the internet did not exist, Julia Allison would be a nice intern somewhere, working her microminis and then maybe one day meet Tina Brown and have something nice happen to her for a year. She’s extremely bright and when you read what she writes you see it’s well thought-out, but to be really famous your face needs to be recognizable, your name needs to be recognizable—by more than a small subset of people. If you said, ‘I saw Julia Allison yesterday!’ most people wouldn’t know what you were talking about. But if you said, ‘I saw Julia Roberts yesterday!’ they’d know what you were talking about.”

She’s right. Even so, the section about how Paris Hilton plays the press (“The Paris Hilton Method,” page 65) could be of some use to aspiring fameballers—I’ll trade Laurie’s home phone for Owen Thomas’!

Seriously, though, the way fame is spreading on the web, and with microcelebrity having such a wide and bizarre array of wonders and dangers (from the power you can exert dating the founders of your choice start-up to death by commenter execution) I think there’s a definite sequel there.

Of Possible Interest:
Leslie Gornstein will be signing books and holding a live chat in Los Angeles on Thursday, March 19, 2009, at 7:00PM at the Barnes and Noble at the Grove on 189 Grove Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90036. Call (323) 525-0270.

Full disclosure—Leslie gave me a copy of her book. Yes, I’ve read it, but I’m not gonna tell you just how juicy it is. I’ll leave it by saying that two friends have already attempted to steal it.

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