The Political Whore

Last night some Facebook users were invited to be part of a beta test for Facebook Lite (the link now bounces you not to Lite but to regular Facebook), but they soon found that the invitation was premature: Facebook pulled the trigger on too many beta testers, only to shut down the link.

So, what is Facebook Lite?

Depends on who you ask. Tech Crunch reports that it looks much like Twitter or FriendFeed:

Okay, while it seems that most of the users who are getting this message now are not seeing much different, earlier this week, it looks like a very select few may have gotten a sneak peak at Facebook Lite. According to their tweets on it, it appears to be a more Twitter-like. One user notes that it, “looks like a simplified version of twitter with comments enabled. On 2nd thought, it looks like simplified FriendFeed.”

That is of course very interesting since Facebook just bought FriendFeed for around $50 million yesterday.

Tech Crunch features this screen capture of Facebook Lite.

The Washington Post, however, says it ain’t Twitter-esque or FriendFeed-like: Read the rest of this entry »

Stuart Mellish Thinks the Republicans should get out of the way and let Obama fix this Country. You had your 8 years and you screwed it up. STEP ASIDE!

By Jim Johnson
PoHo Contributor

Jim Johnson is the creator of The State of Sunshine blog.

Last month, I wrote a post here on Political Whore about US Airways flight 1549, which landed in the Hudson river with all aboard safe.  The first images where not from a major news organization or a photojournalist, they were from a bystander and were disseminated via Twitter.  It eventually prompted a response earlier this month from Michael Hussey at Pushing Rope with an interesting discussion about news. Read the rest of this entry »

Penn Jillette asks: Hey Al Gore, if we have global warming, why is it snowing in Vegas?

• Pew: Internet overtakes newspapers as primary news source.
• Harold Pinter, playwright and Sondheim lyric reference, dead at 78.
• Eartha Kitt, singer of “Santa Baby,” dies on Christmas day.
• The slagging of Caroline Kennedy continues as her Senate chances are in doubt.
• Another argues: Why not Caroline?
• Haley Barbour on GOP’s hope for a comeback: “When you’ve had the White House for eight years, you become a very top-down party. We Republicans are clearly better as a bottom-up party.”
• “If you spend your life teaching people in media about social media, about conversational publishing and genuine online community, you will spend a good percentage of your time being told you are wrong.”
• Who shot Rudolph?
• The weird, twisted and conspiratorial death of GOP consultant Michael Connell.
• NASA: “Massively dysfunctional.”