Twitter is quite the medium. An endless source of looping GIFs, "viral" videos, and, sadly, bad advertising. Most of the latter category is quickly dismissed by the block and report spam features of Twitter, but the occasional spambot elevates its "craft" to a level of surreal bliss which begs attention. "horse_ebooks" is perhaps Twitter's best example of that phenomenon, offering indecipherable (and delightful) missives that are heavily retweeted and always nonsensical. "How to get the best bargains in satellite," for instance. Sadly, it looks like we've all been had. What many (ourselves included) thought to be an accidentally hilarious spam account for a low-rent eBook publishing firm is actually a long-running art installation by Jacon Bakkila (a 29-year-old Buzzfeed employee). Bakkila outed the ruse this morning in an exhibit at New York City's FitzRoy Gallery named "Horse_ebooks 2," where Bakkila himself and two friends are answering phones all day (from 10AM to 9PM ET) and giving users a verbal taste of the content you'd normally read on...well, the horse_ebooks Twitter account (the phone number is 213-444-0102 if you'd like to call). It's unclear if the account will continue from here. It sounds like a no, though, as Bakkila tells The New York Times that, "The goal was not to appropriate the account but to become the account," referencing the account's previous Russian owner and its original use (to sell eBooks). Gawker's got a walkthrough of the art gallery... Continue reading at 'Engadget'
[ Engadget | 2013-09-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Twitter's Ev Williams started Medium to simplify and socialize online article writing, but the service's invitation-only nature has kept many folks on the sidelines. Today, things are opening up: Medium's now accessible to anyone willing to sign into Twitter and verify an email address. Would-be ... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2013-10-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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An exhibition on New York's graffiti traces the history of the art form in the city, a Parisian museum shows how immigrants helped shape comic books worldwide - and other stories from the world of arts. Continue reading at BBC World
[ BBC World | 2013-10-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hot Key Books is to publish a debut by 18-year-old Isobel Harrop, after publisher Emily Thomas... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-10-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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When it comes to referral traffic from social networks, there's Facebook and Pinterest — and then there's everyone else. Facebook accounted for more than 10% of overall traffic to publishers in September, by ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2013-10-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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An excerpt from a forthcoming book on the birth of Twitter reveals surprising new details about the company's founders. Some not-so-pretty. Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2013-10-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Stanford Law School Fellow Vivek Wadhwa, whose criticism of Twitter's all-make board sparked a weekend debate on the social network, took to Bloomberg TV with his arguments on Monday. "They are a small elite group I call 'The Mafia' who are stuck in the echo chamber," said Wadhwa, who is... Continue reading at Silicon Valley Business Journal
[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2013-10-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Four months after introducing video, Instagram took the natural next step today, telling its over 150 million users their streams would soon include ads too.The company, acquired by Facebook for $736 million in 2012, announced the development in a short blog post it published Thursday afternoon.... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2013-10-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Retirement means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For Steven Soderbergh, it has meant, turning his attention away from directing theatrical releases at a breakneck pace, and working on any number of other projects instead. One such project involved writing a novella on... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2013-09-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Restaurateur Scott Conant, author of 'The Scarpetta Cookbook,' explains the Italian idea of sprezzatura, making hard work look easy. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-09-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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After a two-decade-long relationship between the magazine giant Time Inc. and American Express, Time Inc. plans to close quickly on its purchase of American Express’s publishing division. “This 20-year courtship is finally bei ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2013-09-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Google's got an ad exchange. So does Facebook. Twitter is said to be working on one too. But in the meantime, the company has just purchased MoPub, a burgeoning mobile ad exchange business. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. MoPub has built an ad exchange through which mobile publishers... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2013-09-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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JCDecaux has launched a Twitter-driven book club to connect with commuters and use its digital screens in stations to enhance commuters' journeys. Continue reading at Media Week
[ Media Week | 2013-08-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Tumblr was nearly as busy as Twitter during MTV's Video Music Awards on Sunday when it came to the sheer number of content contributors, per Union Metrics, a company that offers analytics for both platforms. The San Francisco tech firm says 1.1 million Tumblr users posted content with... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2013-08-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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“I’ll corroborate what you’ve probably been hearing,” says Abrams CEO Michael Jacobs, when asked to discuss the state of digital publishing in the art and photo book market. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-08-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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W H Smith predicts the outcome for the end of its year of trading to be “in line with... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-08-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The last time PW visited Bright Arts at its King’s Road office, the color-separation industry was fighting for its survival. The demarcation distinguishing color-separation houses, prepress bureaus and printing companies from one another was disappearing. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-08-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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“The underlying grip of movies is that they program us to have experiences. They create events in our heads…” -- Jeffrey Zacks, Flicker: Your Brain On Film. Forthcoming from Oxford University Press If you’re interested in science, you probably heard last week’s news that memories were... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2013-08-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hepatitis B gets a little less awful sounding when you see how it looks under a microscope, as part of a new book called Hidden Beauty: Exploring the Aesthetics of Medical Science. It’s strange how something deadly can also be beautiful. These images are all of major diseases--hepatitis B,... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2013-08-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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BookVibe allows users to search their tweets and extract the books that are being discussed by the people they follow on Twitter. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-07-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Upset by the 'not guilty' verdict in George Zimmerman's murder trial, one Twitter user started the online campaign that ended Martin Literary Agency's representation of Juror B37, who announced plans to write a book about the trial. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-07-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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