Two City Council members want to sue Twitter, Facebook over flash mob

Councilman Frank DiCicco

Councilmembers Frank DiCicco and James F. Kenney are seeking the possibility of suing social media sites like Twitter or Facebook if they indeed played a role in Tuesday’s Market East flash mob, as CNET reported this week.

The councilmen requested permission from Mayor Michael Nutter to take legal action to force a mechanism to stop events like the flash mob of this week.

On Tuesday, roughly 150 teens may have used text messaging and social media sites to coordinate a chaotic rampage from the Gallery mall throughout Market Street, pushing, kicking and vandalizing their way toward the Macy’s near City Hall and an inevitable snowball fight.

No serious injuries were reported, though 16 arrests were made, according to the Inquirer.

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Twitter tracking Local Trends in Philadelphia, 14 other cities

What was trending in Philadelphia Thursday night on Twitter. Click to enlarge.

Tracking the dominant conversations in Philadelphia’s Twitter communities has gotten quite a bit easier.

As the microblogging rock star announced on its company blog this week, in addition to tracking what phrases, words and hashtags are being most frequently used worldwide at a given time on Twitter, the trends can now be localized to 15 cities, including Philadelphia, or one of six countries.

This gives you the option to see while, yes, last night the top trending item in Philadelphia was stimulating conversation over the meme ‘I’m not the type to…,” the worldwide conversation trended more to “Best Sex songs.”

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Shop Talk: Philadelphia’s venture capital community on Twitter

Image courtesy of millionclues.com

If you have ever shown a friend or relative Twitter, you were probably met with a response along the lines of, “Why would I ever want to use this?”

Mostly, it’s hard to quantify the usefulness of a tool such as Twitter, but the startup and venture capital research Web site Chubbybrain has given it their best shot by asking the question: Do VCs who use Twitter invest in more startups?

The report is an interesting look at how venture capital firms use Twitter while judging its effectiveness. But, as expected, the report focuses mostly on VCs in California, Boston and New York. That got us thinking, what local VC’s are on Twitter?
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Events highlights for the week of June 8 – June 14, 2009

The city must have a case of “omgz it’s nice out now” as our event calendar is heavy on monthly meetups and light on, well, everything else.

That makes this week a good time to catch up on those groups and events that you have been meaning to get around to, but haven’t had the chance.

We hate to break it to you, but Monday this week is a empty void on our calendar giving you no excuse to take off today. Tuesday, however, be sure to make it out to The Federal Reserve Bank for some practical talk on social media with the Entrepreneurs Forum.

Continue the social media trend the next night out in the burbs, with a seminar on how to make money using Twitter. Then, make like Washington on Thursday and venture on over to Swanky Bubbles in Cherry Hill for the growing NJ and Philly Tech meetup.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.
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South Philly’s Stoya: adult film it girl on DOS, social media and leaving Philadelphia

Adult film star and tech head Stoya in a South Philly cafe. Photo by Neal Santos. See more of his work at NealSantos.com.

It could be her, standing in the low light of a trendy South Philadelphia coffee shop.

There are maybe 10 people — drinking tea and working on laptops — most of whom are cute, pale-faced women with dark hair and a look. One arrived promptly at 4 p.m. and happened to be the biggest young thing in the entirety of mainstream adult film.

She was introduced as South Philly’s Stoya by CityPaper last November, but with more than six years of this city behind her and the heart of a profitable and exhausting porn career ahead of her, Stoya is leaving Philadelphia.

And she’s taking her Twitter account, T-Mobile G1 phone and MacBook Air with her. But the “Goth Girl Next Door,” who has catapulted to among the top names at porn powerhouse Digital Playground, says she isn’t a nerd — she was just raised one.

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Friday Q&A: John Pino, CEO of networking site i-Meet

John Pino loves launching companies and loves Philadelphia.

So where else would you expect him to launch what he says just might be the next big professional networking service?

In November, Pino founded and self-funded i-Meet.com, which utilizes social-networking features to connect like-minded people in their efforts to organize, plan and promote events. The South Philadelphia-native, who grew up near 17th and Oregon Avenue in St. Monica’s Parish, didn’t want his tech startup based anywhere else but Center City, which he says is on its way to being the next great corridor of innovation.

His “strong launch team” all learned the tech-business game in Philly.

“The impetus,” for the launch Pino says, was a “screaming need for a worldwide network in the meeting and event industry, and we decided we would make it happen. Especially when we figured out how to put a business overlay over the social aspects of the community.”

Now i-Meet has more than 7,000 members from 100 countries worldwide, Pino says, and, though he wouldn’t disclose specific revenue figures, the company has a real monetization strategy, including premium options.

We didn’t mention that we caught the social networker on Facebook, but he did mention how he’s going to make bank, why we don’t need another social network and that his parents were not part of organized crime.

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Friday Tech Links: Peirce College head is offline, some columnist writes about Facebook again and More

Updated 5/15/09, 9:14 a.m.: Corrected copy errors.

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here.

• The Inquirer reports on the retirement of Arthur Lendo, noted for taking tiny Rittenhouse-based Pierce Peirce College from regional “Oh, I didn’t even realize that was real college” to “if I heard of them it was because of their online education program.” Don’t give him too much credit, though. A Google search of “Pierce College” yields a California school first. ..Bah.

We get some Navy IT, the Flyers soar and three other tech stories you should read — including our most trafficked post of the week.

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How social media took Asher Roth from Philly suburbs to hip hop stardom

It’s going to be that anthem you hear over and over again this summer, and the artist behind it happens to have grown up in Bucks County, a half hour Regional Rail ride into Center City.

Like a growing collection of young artists, Asher Roth, the artist behind “I Love College,” found his path to a major label album by way of MySpace. But it seems likely he’ll see more than Internet fame.

I helped profile Asher Roth on the cover of today’s Philadelphia Weekly, but during our interview last month, we also spoke about the role social media have had on launching his career.

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Montgomery County schools on Twitter, canvassing the masses

Now this is why I joined Twitter — prom updates.

The Perkiomen Valley School District in Collegeville, Pa. and the Jenkintown School District, both of which are in Montgomery County, are using the microblogging service.

They are spreading school news and information to the masses, or, well, 62 and 21 Twitter accounts, respectively. To be fair, though, neither of them suffer the following of users like Sexplatorium.

“Now, parents will know where to go to get the information they need,” said one of the followers, Mary Ellen Polaski, mother of a 10th grader. “You don’t have the time to go all over the [district] Web site, finding out what’s going on. This is one-stop shopping.”

Technically Not Tech: Graphic novelist Duane Swierczynski

Crazed graphic novelist and Philadelphia-native Duane Swierczynski isn’t the first comic-author using social media.

Last month, we spoke to the South Philly minds behind the Black Cherry Bombshells. But Swierczynski, 37, who has blogged since October 2004 and tweeted since last summer, recalls when fan chasing was a real game.

“I remember writing a fan letter to Clive Barker back in 1988, and I went through a lot of trouble trying to figure out the address, typing the letter, retyping the letter when I realized that I made a few bone-headed mistakes, and finally, waiting many, many weeks for a response,” Swierczynski said. “I still have the letter framed.”

“Now it’s extremely easy to reach out and say “yo” to your favorite writer. This is great, but perhaps some of the magic has been lost, too.”

That’s because fans of the man behind the newest editions of The Punisher for Marvel Comics can just get online and come find Duane Swierczynski in an instant.

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