Friends abandon Facebook; NYT writer sounds death knell

Glad to see I’m not alone in my scorn for Virginia Heffernan’s Sunday NYT mag story about Facebook quitters. Heffernan took very slim evidence indeed — a handful of friends have soured on the social media site — to suggest it is doomed like a college clique. Of course, the numbers don’t really back that up, as she herself acknowledges in a paragraph that encapsulates all that is wrong with this column:

The exodus is not evident from the site’s overall numbers. According to comScore, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the United States in July. But while people are still joining Facebook and compulsively visiting the site, a small but noticeable group are fleeing — some of them ostentatiously.

The most shocking thing about this flimsy story is that it actually made it past editors. Yes, The Medium is a column, and yes it’s the dog days of summer, when many editorial minders on vacation, but the NYT should know better. The NY Observer rightly spanks the paper for the story.

Not so fast: NYT tech story stacked the deck

Remember the NYT front pager a week ago that suggested more and more families are logging on the first thing in the morning, leaving the family dog in the lurch? Well, turns out reporter Brad Stone drew a little too heavily from a network of friends and families that are naturally predisposed to voracious media consumption. Yesterday the paper’s public editor, Clark Hoyt, said supporting evidence for this trend story was thin; business editor Larry Ingrassia conceded that “Brad should have cast the net wider,” but maintains it’s still a valid story. Read the story

Survey says: Tweets don’t matter

Do tweets affect ticket buying? Several outlets propagated the notion earlier this summer, but MovieTickets.com found otherwise in a poll this week. The NYT reports that 58 percent of those surveyed said Twitter messages had no impact on their decision; 30% chose the “What’s Twitter” option. Bad news for SkinniPopcorn.com, the movie tweet aggregator profiled by the Times earlier this week?

Wake up, log on

If you check your email, Facebook and Twitter before breakfast, you are not alone. The NYT has a front-page story about the phenom in today’s paper. Not that people the story’s about will actually get to it right away. Also suffering: the family dog.

Movie tweets for the impatient

SkinniPopcorn.com assembles movie tweets for those without the patience or inclination to read reviews. “Combing through reviews is such a pain,” British company’s creator, Brendan Dawes told the NYT. “We wanted gut commentary, a very quick snapshot.”  NYT