Shots in the Dark

Judging from the ongoing hype, the social networking service that I love to deplore is used by, well, just about everybody.

In fact, I just got a report from a consulting firm called Edison Research that shows that, well, just about everybody at least has heard of Twitter.

…we can report that awareness of Twitter is nearly universal - in fact, it’s difficult to see how it could be much higher. Awareness of Twitter amongst Americans 12+ currently stands at 92%.

But how many people actually use Twitter?

Hmmm….

Twitter usage, on the other hand, does have significant room for growth. This year, we are reporting that eight percent of Americans 12+ are current users of Twitter, up one percentage point from last year.

“Significant room for growth”—that’s one way to look at it. The other is that the vast majority of the country knows about this free service and has chosen not to use it.

Now, eight percent of Americans is a lot of people, and there’s no question that in some contexts many people find Twitter entertaining and (during the occasional revolution, what have you) useful.

But unlike with Facebook, in my opinion, most people still don’t feel that they derive enough value from Twitter tho make it worth their time. I’d bet that if you ran the numbers on Twitter users, you’d find 50% were under the age of 20, 80% under the age of 30, and the other ten percent work in public relations and marketing.

Maybe in the long run this will mean that, as young people get older, they will keep using Twitter and its use will become more pervasive among adults. And it certainly means that Twitter can provide access to a desirable (from a marketer’s point of view) audience of young consumers.

But I’d bet it’s just as likely that Twitter stays marginalized among tech geeks, PR people and the young—like MTV. And I’d say there’s a decent chance that something else (or somethings) comes along to either replace it or chip away at its social networking status….

The Harvard-affiliated convicted felon paid off a $24,000 debt owed by Sarah Ferguson, the former duchess of York. (Or whatever she was.)

The New York Post agrees with me: James Franco, no mas….

Even Yale has turned on its celeb scholar. The school newspaper took a shot at him last month by writing in a blog post: “Your Twitter sort of sucks.”

Even Yale!

Franco didn’t cooperate with last week’s gushing and completely unnecessary Times profile which lauded Franco as a “polymath.”

(You know that when the Times writes about a trend, it’s officially over.)

Which suggests that even he realizes he’s over. Here’s a prediction: Now that the mainstream media is catching up to the bloggers, and everyone’s a little sick of stories about Franco goes to Yale, expect that that dissertation in English will never get written.

America’s most incomprehensible sportswriter covered Harvard’s big victory against Princeton the other night. See if you can make sense of this lede:

And now, they wait.

After the win, after the rushing of the court, after the emotion and the excitement and the odes to past players and coaches, Harvard’s immediate fate has been taken out of its hands. The Crimson did what they could. And now, their focus shifts to Philadelphia, to The Palestra, where Princeton will take on Penn Tuesday in the game that will decide the next step for Harvard.

Oh, dear. Where to start?

One could get specific: What is “the rushing of the court”? “Harvard’s immediate fate”? Why is the “t” capitalized in “The Palestra”?

(This last is an editor thing and may seem persnickety, but someone has to fight the encroachment of what I call commercial-speak upon proper grammar. Even the Coliseum does not get called The Coliseum.)

But really there’s just a general issue of over-writing here. Is there no editor at the Globe who can sit down with AB and tell her three words: “Less is more”?

The scary Internet giant has accessed the phones of Android users to eradicate viruses that were introduced to countless Android phones last week, PC Mag reports.

These steps included the removal of the offending applications from the Android Market—around 50—within minutes of Google learning about the issue. In addition to this, Google fired up its remote nuking capabilities, otherwise known as its “remote application removal feature,” to delete the applications from users’ phones. Affected users may get notifications that the applications have been removed from their phones, although Google also plans to email those whose Android devices were compromised by the attacks.

Google says no personal information was stolen by the viruses. Frankly, that’s a little hard to believe. In any case, the unsettling incident should give Android users pause about downloading any Android apps.

The controversy over the sex demonstration in a Northwestern University classroom has gone viral global.

Faith Kroll, the female participant, has taken to Twitter to defend herself. (Finally: Twitter proves itself useful.)

the class we taught was a psych sexuality class.

It’s not porn if you’re teaching about the mechanics. That’s the kind of stuff you hide in porn!

porn is a fantasy nothing I did was fantasy. it was as clinical as the movie that was shown in the class, but with more facts!

As usual, the university will buckle to political pressure and suspend or fire the professor.

But the thing is…he did warn the students and told them to leave if they wanted to, the incident did happen at the end of a (human sexuality) class, and I suppose it has some educational value.

I mean, sure, probably not very much. And it’s probably nothing that the students, at least the male ones, don’t look at online in their dorm rooms every day.

But wouldn’t it be refreshing if this country could actually have a mature conversation about a public incident involving sex?

They came to the aid of a Red Sox in need.

…Bridget survived, and doctors re-attached the leg—but her body rejected it, and it had to be removed. She would need a prosthetic leg, and although the Red Sox had been financially generous to Johnson, money was still a problem, [Yankee hitting coach Kevin] Long told the roomful of Yankee players….

(Thanks to the long-suffering, slightly envious Mets fan who sent this to me.)

Story of my life, right?

(But that, I think, is the job of a journalist. Or part of it, anyway.)

The Yale Daily News interviewed me on the subject of White House press secretary Jay Carney, who was a year behind me at Yale; we worked on the same magazine.

BusinessInsider reports on “what elite universities are teaching your kids—live sex in class.”

No word on whether there’s a pass/fail option….

The Guardian reports that more than 50 apps for Google’s phone operating system have been found to be infected with malware called “Droid Dream,” which can pillage your phone of, basically, everything.

The revelation comes from Android Police, a news site on Google’s operating system, which calls it “the mother of all Android malware”, noting that its examination had found that it “steals nearly everything it can: product ID, model, partner (provider?), language, country, and userID. But that’s all child’s play; the true pièce de résistance is that it has the ability to download more code. In other words, there’s no way to know what the app does after it’s installed, and the possibilities are nearly endless.”

This is scary stuff, and it’s one reason why the Apple App Store, for all its flaws, is a much wiser play than Android.

There’s little doubt in my mind that Google is going to have to start curating its apps. As one blogger says, “Android is the new Windows.” And that’s just not something you want to be.