Unbelievable news out of LinkedIn tonight:

4/2/2008: Yes, this was supposed to be completely unbelievable - it was an April Fool’s joke.

LinkedIn to End Free Service

4/2/2008: No, they’re not really.

I knew this day was coming.

4/2/2008: Every April Fool’s Day has a day after,  when we all clean up the mess we made.

From Jim Turner on Twitter:

Is it just my imagination or does Twitter sometimes ‘eat’ your tweets? Must [have] a ‘tweet tooth’ or something.

I have two new social media addictions thanks to SXSW. The first is Twitter (more on that in another post, but in the meantime, you can follow me); the second is Bitstrips.

Simply put, Bitstrips is a Web 2.0 application for creating comic strips. It enables people like me who have no artistic talent, but occasionally observe or think of something funny, to have a nicely-rendered visual expression of it. But what makes it really compelling is the social aspect of it.

For starters, you can create a character to represent yourself:

This is me	This is me on Bitstrips

Then you can connect with existing friends and use their characters in your strips. For example, I figured bLaugh creator Chris Pirillo would be interested in this, so I thought I’d drop him a line to tell him about it. Needless to say, he was already there and highly active:

You can also create characters representing your friends and then invite them to join.

Once you’ve done all that you can use your friends’ characters and the characters they’ve created to make strips of funny things that happened in real life. And before anyone gives me grief about this next strip, I’ll say that a) it’s a slight exaggeration, b) I cleared it with the star of it before publishing it (”Oh man, you could’ve made it WAY more unflattering than that. It’s perfect!!!!”), and c) no, the guys in the background aren’t any specific people - y’all go make your own!

You can also make images of celebrities. And you can edit your friends’ strips (well, not actually edit, but create copies of theirs which you can then edit):

Of course, including your friends and family in comic strips may not always go over well:

It’s incredibly fun to create the strips, and incredibly funny to read them. I also love that they build the tutorials in the application itself, for example:

They even use it to communicate company news:

That said, it is a 1.0 product, and it has, shall we say, quite a few shortcomings, such as:

Limited range of expressions…

Shortage of people who are actually funny…

Characters can only be human…

Lacking some seemingly obvious essential props, like musical instruments…

And phones…

Fortunately, they’re working on it…

Of course, some people have come up with some pretty creative solutions in the meantime (in case you’re wondering, that’s a stack of tables in the back)…

Well, that’s my review. Now just to think up an idea for my next strip…

Oh yeah… if you decide to check it out, feel free to add me as a friend.

I reckon Radical Buy will eventually have to put all the same kind of controls in that eBay has. In the meantime, we get this silliness:

And hey… if you can help him sell it, you’ll make a $100 million commission!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 License.

For more great cartoons about Web 2.0, check out Geek and Poke. Here are a few of my favorites:

• That Was 2007 - Part 1: The Social Graph
• The Latest From Facebook
• The Facebook Way - Part 2
• The New Social Way
• What Is A Blogger?

One of my associates in Link To Your World, Carter Smith, did a great post today on The CEO’s New Social Network Strategy. Carter very effectively skewers both the distorted perspective many corporate leaders have about social networking and even moreover, the people with absolutely no field real field experience who then try to consult with them about it.

Enjoy!

Cartoon by Peter Steiner in the July 5, 1993 issue of The New Yorker, (Vol.69 (LXIX) no. 20, p. 61).
Photo by CogDogBlog via flickr with lolcats text by Scott Allen.

It’s amazing just how anti-social some people can be in social networking sites. I suppose it comes with the territory when you have a site with millions of visitors. That doesn’t mean I have to like it, and it is why, generally, I spend more time in the business-oriented sites than the huge public behemoths like YouTube and MySpace. What really baffles me, though, are the two recent reports I’ve heard of people getting “F-U” responses from people on LinkedIn.

OK, that’s not funny. But this cartoon is:

(more…)

I’ve written before about the challenges of being incredibly busy. I will readily admit to being chronically — perhaps even pathologically — over-committed.

One of those many commitments is our monthly Fast Company column. Fast Company is getting ready to make some big changes in their site, expanding on the social media and social networking functionality. And our editor sent out a call to those of us who are FC columnists and bloggers to beta test the new site. Needless to say, I couldn’t resist.

So maybe you’ll understand why I laughed so hard I spewed my drink when I read the following reply to the same request from Dr. Mark Goulston (who has a great blog, by the way):

Count me in. When you’re overextended like I am one of the best things to do is shift into denial with a twist of manic grandiosity and take on more. God forbid I should leave any synapse or receptor site unused. Best to all, Mark

Funny, funny stuff. I look forward to reading more… and thanks, Dr. Mark — you made my day yesterday.

I think Andy Sernovitz has to have the funniest e-mail auto-reply I’ve ever received:

Holy Crap!
We just had a baby.

I really should pay more attention when my wife tells me about these things.

I guess that means that I’ll reply to your email as soon as I can.

Cheers,

Andy

Of course, Andy called me about two seconds after I blogged this. Apparently he has a little more time on his hands now that he’s semi-retired from WOMMA.

Watch tomorrow on my Linked Intelligence blog for a very special offer from Andy.