The story behind Twitter's Steve Colbert

Last week, I received an email saying that StephenTColbert was following me on Twitter. Following being the sincerest form of social media flattery, I followed him back. Of course, I was not alone. Colbert was following 10,000 people and being followed by about 5,000. But was Colbert real? I did wonder. Not that I pictured him tweeting away all day, but figured that it was possible that Comedy Central had embarked on some Twitter-based promotional campaign. And some of the tweets certainly sounded legit: "Like any good newsman, I believe that if you're not scared, I'm not doing my job." "Move over Oprah, tonight every member of the Colbert Nation receives a priceless gift... the Truth." Credible enough. Comedy Central issued a denial, but was that just part of the joke? Then, last night, this: "Question to Twitter: Shall I continue this farce or retire the account?" OK, so it wasn't Steve Colbert. Whoever did impersonate Colbert, posted a lengthy explanation here. including how the post from one believer, titled, "Stephen Colbert watches Diggnation!” made it to Digg's front page. The fake Colbert has symbolically handed the account over to the real one. Would be cool, if he, or some other worthy personality actually did use Twitter, but not sure we're there yet.

Watching the wall at wsj.com fall

By the time wsj.com is free to the masses, the story will be just another news blip to flip (or more likely scroll) past. Rupert, who doesn't yet own the Journal, told a bunch of his homies in Adelaide yesterday that once he actually owned the joint, he would stop wsj.com's subscription model and let the ad revenue flow in, which doesn't exactly rate as news since that move is all but assumed, but was covered as though it was. I haven't done the math on this, but I can easily see it making more money as a free site. The content is still coveted, but strangely, every time I've re-upped my sub the last few years I've felt like somewhat of a chump, even knowing I could write it off. I mean, who pays for content anymore? Probably not so many that it offsets the potential ad revenue stream the site could get. And brick-by-brick the wall is coming down even without Rupert's ownership. The Journal has actively sent links to free content to bloggers for several years. Now, I just saw on Mediapost that anyone who Diggs a WSJ story will automatically make the content they're linking to free to anyone who accesses it through Digg. I had once hoped that a subscription model could flourish on the Internet, but it's time to move on.