Going Viral: 'How a Link Spreads Through the Twitterverse'

[FoxNews: Helen Thomas Retires]

Excerpt:

Using a combination of the Twitter API, the TweetMeme API and the Processing visualization library, I was able to graph the spread of a handful of popular links. In the TweetMaps below the circles represent each user who ReTweeted the link, they're bigger or smaller based on the number of followers they have. People who are following accounts that Tweeted the link before they did have lines drawn to the accounts they're following (and could have "caught" the link from). The graphs show the first wave of Tweets of each link (generally the first few hours). When you see a number of circles extending horizontally across the graph that means that those accounts all Tweeted the link very close together in time.

CLICK THE 'TWEETMAP' ABOVE OR BELOW TO SEE WHAT ALL THIS MEANS, AND/OR TO DOWNLOAD A FREE MARKETING MANUAL FROM THE CREATOR OF THIS STUDY.


[Alternet: 19-Year-Old American Killed in Flotilla Attack]

Sha Stimuli Features AWKWORD on 'Stimulife' Site

The big homie Sha Stimuli came through and posted some love for AWKWORD on his site Stimulife.

Click his logo to view.

AWKWORD "Notes From A Different Kitchen (Blog Rap)" Featured All Over The Web

Click the banner to download the mp3.



Or view any of these top sites that featured the track:

- Notes From A Different Kitchen
- Hip Hop Forever
- Work Harder
- Crate Scienz
- WE ARE hunted (99 Most Popular Emerging Songs)
- Ink Drop
- the find buzz
- Muzic
- ELBOWS
- mippin

BACKGROUND (brief):

The big homie Sha Stimuli told us "the blogs are gonna eat it up" -- so we had to shoot this new freestyle over to yall... AWK drops 46 blogs in 24 bars!... Did you make the cut?

Vocals by AWKWORD; production by The White Shadow of Norway.

For more information, please click here.

ALSO FROM AWKWORD & THE WHITE SHADOW OF NORWAY:

AWKWORD - Notes From A Different Kitchen (Blog Rap)

As featured on the blog by the very same name...



The big homie Sha Stimuli told us "the blogs are gonna eat it up" -- so we had to shoot this new freestyle over to yall... AWK drops 46 blogs in 24 bars!... Did you make the cut?

Vocals by AWKWORD; production by The White Shadow of Norway.

This is one of many collaborations between AWK and White Shadow, who is also serving as co-executive producer of AWKWORD's forthcoming Word View album, the first-ever 100% nonprofit global hip hop project. With production from 15+ nations and every continent on earth, and all proceeds going to combat youth street violence, the album is designed to connect us all, and better our communities, through the transformative power of hip hop.

Expected to drop in late 2010, the album features AWK alongside such hip hop heavyweights as Sha Stimuli, Jadakiss, Punchline (eMC), KRS-One, Main Flow, AWOL One, Poison Pen, Reks, C-Rayz Walz, Mazzi (S.O.U.L. Purpose) and more.

LINKS (high-quality mp3):

- Option 1
- Option 2

LYRICS:

... we goin in!...

im a model minority, bring the challengers in /
correcting combat jack's daily math, with dallas's pen / (wooohah!)
pardon me duke, my gorilla arms stay swinging /
clips or kisses, these are notes from a different kitchen.

im a street poet, spittin, naked with socks on /
stand for the grand good, not just a hot song / (wooohah!)
pardon me duke, my ruby hornet stay stinging /
those two words, are notes from a different kitchen.

2dopeboyz, unkut, on smash /
white shadow, awkword, beats and rants /
in the smoking section, ask miss info to dance /
i got cocaine blunts and hip hop tapes in my pants /
east coast critics are biased, so they say /
but we been cloud kickers, since back in the day /
its not all 4 arrogance, i got poisonous paragraphs /
and fraud's 38th notes, embarrass that ass /
you got elite taste?, and every chicks a fiya starter? /
oh word, okay player, nah right, dont bother /
im sicka than average, youre something like a rapper /
go paint the world pink, youre just a nod factor /
im the calm and the kaos effect, day in the lyfe /
work harder, up north trips, to dr. jay's live /
real talk ny, sucker free, that real ish /
mbc digi, necole bitchie even feel this.

ALSO FROM AWKWORD & THE WHITE SHADOW OF NORWAY:

Tracking Suppression of Online Free Speech

(Adapted from the Huffington Post)



Blogging from a fancy office in New York City, it is easy to forget how dangerous it can be for bloggers around the world to do their work. Yet, in October 2009, a HuffPost blogger in Cuba, Yoani Sanchez, was refused permission to travel to the U.S., where she was to be awarded a prize by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. In other cases, bloggers face harassment and even imprisonment for calling attention to government corruption and abuses...

Now, Global Voices, a global community of bloggers, has launched a project to track the censorship and harassment faced by bloggers worldwide.

For more information, please click here.

DJ AM = More Than The Sum of His Drugs

Adam Goldstein, a.k.a. DJ AM, was more than the combo of crack, OxyContin, Klonopin, Xanax, Ativan, Benadryl, Levamisole and Vicodin that killed him at 'lucky' 36.

His last public contact was via twitter: "New york, new york. Big city of dreams, but new york aint always what it seems."

Click the image (Allen Salkin, "Dancing with Demons", The New York Times, October 16, 2009)...

SexMS -- it aint me, I swear!

Study shows youths tweet, text and facebook after sex.

Click the image...

On Charles Hamilton, Joe Budden, Asher Roth, and the Perils of Internet Oversharing

With his pink wardrobe, adoption of retro video-game character Sonic the Hedgehog as a spirit animal, and languid verses, Charles Hamilton was a newcomer built to thrive in a rap environment that has learned to tolerate a splash of DayGlo whimsy. The 21-year-old was cute and contempo and sensitive, but retained enough Harlem arrogance to escape being ostracized as a total pussy. After signing with Interscope Records in the summer of 2008, Hamilton spent the next year exuberantly building a reputation as an underdog smartass: He released several mixtapes, blogged with regularity, Twittered 50-some times a day, and reveled in the real-time furor he was able to create as a hip-hop fameball.

Despite Hamilton's enthusiasm, missteps accumulated. He was busted for pilfering a beat from an underground producer. He came out the loser after exchanging disparaging video clips with kiddie-rapper Soulja Boy. He was punched in the face by a female spoken-word poet after insinuating that she had aborted their unborn child during a videotaped "battle." And in a climactic faux pas in June, he weirdly credited deceased beatmaker J-Dilla with "executive producing" his forthcoming LP A Perfect Life—a sin that earned self-righteous rebuttals from protectionist Detroiters and a refutation from Dilla's mother. Within a week's time, Hamilton vanished from the Internet: no blogs, no Tweets, no videos. (His last Twitter update, dated June 10: "Good morning sunshine!!!") According to industry rumormongers, Interscope honcho Jimmy Iovine himself issued the gag order: Shut your pie-hole, or lose your deal. (Hamilton declined an interview request for this story.) A life and death done digitally, this was the rap version of a Tamagotchi pocket pet.

[Excerpted from "On Charles Hamilton, Joe Budden, Asher Roth, and the Perils of Internet Oversharing", 08/19/09, Village Voice]