R.I.P. @Horse_Ebooks, The Human–Run Twitter Bot That Fooled Us All

@Horse_ebooks is the Twitter account that, until today, spewed frequent bouts of eerily poetic nonsense to more than 213,000 followers: @Horse_ebooks was widely believed to be a Twitter bot whose tweets were sent out by a robot that scraped text from obscure parts of the Internet. That is, until barnyard–animal–happy Susan Orlean published a story on the New Yorker's website Tuesday morning revealing @Horse_ebooks is, in fact, run by the very human Jacob Bakkila, of BuzzFeed, and Thomas Bender, formerly of Howcast. The pair also ran the popular and similarly spammy YouTube channel Pronunciation Book. These bots aren't uncommon to run across on Twitter––several of us at Fast Company have even come across our Twitter bot alter–egos. And there are several spammy Twitter accounts like @RealCarrotFacts and @BurlCoatFactory that are too cohesive to be run by a bot, but remain oddly entertaining. What's uncanny about Bakkila and Bender's self–proclaimed "performance art" is how upset many were to find out the bots were actually humans.Read Full Story     Continue reading at 'Fast Company'

[ Fast Company | 2013-09-25 00:00:00 UTC ]

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The Recommender: Comic Book Aficionado J.J. McCorvey Shares A Stunning Testament To Grandparents

The three best things Fast Company's assistant editor found on the Internet this week. Name: J.J. McCorveyRole at Fast Company: Assistant Editor, printTwitter: @jmccorveyTitillating fact: J.J. has a massive comic book collection–-thousands--of mostly Marvel Comics. “Pshh, plenty of folks love... Continue reading at Fast Company

[ Fast Company | 2013-07-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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With 50 Million Users, Flipboard Opens Magazine Creation To The Masses To Take On Tumblr, Pinterest

Flipboard latest update democratizes content curation on the service, introduces search, and provides integration with Etsy. With 50 million users, Flipboard, the social news magazine available on the iPhone and iPad, has become a dominant player in content curation. Now, with competition in... Continue reading at Fast Company

[ Fast Company | 2013-03-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Google's Nexus 7 Tablet Will Lack Some Content In UK

News updates all day from Fast Company.One of the advantages that Google's Nexus 7 tablet may have over its Amazon rival the Kindle Fire is that Google wants to push it out internationally sooner, whereas Amazon is overly US-centric now. But it's emerged that when the Nexus hits British shores,... Continue reading at Fast Company

[ Fast Company | 2012-07-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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What's Behind Amazon's Kindle App Tweak?

Today Amazon announced that it's improving the code behind its Kindle app for iOS and Android to allow support for graphic novels and children's illustrated comics. The iOS app is also being polished to alow better searches of your library of downloaded titles and to better fit the iPad's... Continue reading at Fast Company

[ Fast Company | 2012-06-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Something Is Rotten In The State Of E-Book Publishing

The publishing industry has a problem. The old guard haven't innovated. And neither their business models nor their products embrace the digital books revolution. Take the ongoing and complicated spat between Apple and the Justice Department over the agency pricing model and alleged collusion... Continue reading at Fast Company

[ Fast Company | 2012-04-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Regional Mag 5280 Acquires Denver Magazine

Denver, Colorado-based regional magazine 5280 has acquired the intellectual property of its main competitor, Denver Magazine, including Federal trademark of the brand name, Internet domains including http://denvermagazine.cim and Denver's Twitter account and Facebook pages. Continue reading at Folio Magazine

[ Folio Magazine | 2011-04-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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