Twitter Meets Mass Hysteria

But not so fast. "It is apparent...that the de-ranking and de-search-resulting of a number of books with gay and lesbian content on Amazon was the result of an essentially unintentional software problem," says Nerd World.

Clay Shirky has a long mea culpa of sorts for his initially strong reaction to "an injustice that didn’t actually occur.... What we can’t do if we want to think of ourselves as people who care about injustice, is to fight it in places it doesn’t exist."

A commenter there added: "I can’t help but wonder whether this shows a way in which communications systems like Twitter, with their extremely narrow “bandwidth”, tend to squeeze out the room for complexity, nuance and uncertainty in favor of assumptions, misinformation and simplistic, emotional arguments." Amazon is likely to survive. In fact, it "may be facilitating close to a third of all e-commerce in the US," Tech Trader Daily reports. Now

Thousands of dolphins block Somali pirates

Moving on: This one isn't a video (yet) but has sailed around the globe: Boing Boing relays a Chinese Xinhuanet news report saying thousands of dolphins swarmed to block "evil Somali pirates from attacking Chinese merchant ships the Gulf of Aden" (any NFL fan knows the Dolphins and Bucaneers have a rivalry that goes way back). It might be fake: "It's Xinhuanet, so take it with a grain of salt," says BB. "But even if this is phony PRC naval propaganda, the headline and the story are too good not to re-blurb."

And finally, there was of course that "glitch" on Amazon whereby nearly thousands of hundreds of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their rankings after being classified as "adult material," Mark R. Probst reported. As usual the online blowback blew up exponentially—on Twitter the hashtag #amazonfail becoming the top-ranked topic. Users then began to hunt for books Amazon considered 'adult,' and came up with some pretty weird results, reported Jezebel.

Your request is being processed... Anderson Cooper: "It's Hard to Talk When You're Teabagging" (VIDEO)

Up next after these messages: Did Anderson Cooper really say that? "Oh no he didn't," says Snap, Crackle and Pop. But, yeah, he did.

With some politically conservative citizens around the nation engaging in tea parties—dumping tea bags and jugs of Arizona ice tea to protest the government's recovery spending—CNN analyst David Gergen said the Republicans "still haven't found their voice, Anderson." Cooper quipped, straightfaced: "It's hard to talk when you're teabagging." He was, of course, referring both to the conservative anti-tax tea bagging protests and to the sex act, says HuffPo, which has video (of the CNN conversation only) here. S

ays TV Zone: "I don't what any of this means, but...I'm reasonably certain it doesn't have much to do with Darjeeling or Orange Pekoe." No charges have been filed.

Domino's Rogue Employees Do Disgusting Things To The Food, Put It On YouTube

Meanwhile, some employees at a Domino's pizza franchise in North Carolina had a different dream: to put gross stuff from their noses in the food and make videos of it. Consumerist posted the lose-your-lunch videos here.

Within hours, online readers managed to "track down the location, call the store directly to alert the manager, and send the address to Dominos corporate."

"After a blogosphere firestorm, the video went from 20,000 views on YouTube to 760,000 views, the errant employees were fired and warrants were issued for their arrest," AdAge reported. "It’s a testament to how social media can force major corporations to act much faster than they might otherwise in an effort to do damage control," pundits PaidContent.

The Week in Viral Videos

Eye-opening videos viraled through the Net this week, leaving trails of laughter, tears, and awestruck blog posts.

Begin with the phenomenon of Susan Boyle, the frumpy 47-year-old who went on the TV show Britain's Got Talent, received derisive chuckles for her dowdy looks and her dream of singing professionally—then stunned everyone with a soaring, opera-quality performance of "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables (video here; get out your handkerchiefs).

The "spinster...who lives with her cat and has never been kissed...totally wiped the smug smiles off the faces of Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell with the first notes that emerged from her mouth," raves Undacovasista. "What a wonderful story in this age of media cynicism," says Chuck Warnock.

A Tennessee pastor who blogs at WithoutWax.Tv wrote that the vid taught him "an important lesson": "In our world today we think only the pretty can be succesful.
We think respect and honor should be reserved for those who look and act a certain way....I got nauseous watching this video wondering how many Susan Boyles come in and out of [church] each week unnoticed, unloved and undiscovered."

The Oprah Winfrey Effect on Twitter

Of course there are really two things that make this big blue marble of ours called Earth go around: Oprah and Twitter. Now they are together.

Labnol reports: "On April 17, the day when Oprah joined Twitter by sending a Tweet from her TV show, share of US based visits to the Twitter increased by 24% and some 1.2 million new users signed up for Twitter on that day alone." Look out, Ashton, here she comes.

Silicon Angle asks the relevant in this ego-friendly world: How Can Oprah Joining Twitter Help Me?

Singer Extraordinaire Susan Boyle Sparks Movie Rumors

Meanwhile, the Susan Boyle phenomenon "continues to pass crazy milestones as a viral Web sensation," reports Business Insider.

Visible Measures Blog reports Boyle videos have surpassed 100 million views, although that includes "clips related to her performance on Britain's Got Talent, interviews afterward, and her rendition of 'Cry Me a River' from 1999." Wait, she has sung before? Scandal! Boyle surely is under the microscope now.
BuzzNewsroom thinks there's something fishy about the whole storybook scenario: "This isn’t to suggest that Boyle herself is a hoax (though she does seem a bit too comfortable on that stage, parrying with [Simon] Cowell, to be a complete naif). But the notion that Cowell was unaware of Boyle’s existence...is flatly ridiculous." The only whiff of confirmed scandal so far: Celebutopia reports Boyle is backtracking on her TV claim that she'd never been kissed.

PopCrunch reports that Boyle was "name-dropped" on the South Park that aired Wednesday night: Kyle’s little brother Ike says he's so sick of hearing about her that he's gonna run away (click here for all the profanity).

Apple approves of British nannies

In other things consuming the planet, TechCrunch reports that Apple is closing in on 1 billion downloads from its AppStore. "Apple apparently already knows when the billion mark is going to be passed, because the billion celebration page is ready to go and can easily be accessed, right now."
Hard to determine how much of the billion is from a controversial stupid new iPhone app that lets users shake a picture of a crying baby until it has Xs over its eyes.

Apple initially approved the app for sale, prompting BoingBoing to note that at the AppStore "you can't swear, can't compete with Apple, and can't sell racy novels, but you can shake a baby to death for fun!" The app was abruptly pulled down from the App Store after strong objections were raised by a group working to prevent pediatric traumatic brain injury, says iPhone Savior.
Still no response from Apple about how Baby Shaker made it into the App Store in the first place, notes CNET's Apple blog.

Celebrate Earth Day with New Trash Panic Screens and Details!

Like all symbolic days, Earth Day is something we all can disagree about. "Today we celebrate the destruction of man kind in hopes of saving the environment.
This is exactly what environmentalists want to do," says The Right Side. Uh, sure. "I fired up the charcoal grill to eat some delicious meat and . . . oh . . . I breathed, thereby expelling carbon dioxide into the air to contribute to global warming," says Red State.

Are we done playing around? "In celebration of Earth Day 2009, I wanted to talk to you about Trash Panic,...a brand new puzzle game that combines strategy and action with well…garbage," writes Josh Miller at the PlayStation blog. "
At the end of each stage, each player will be rated by how “eco-friendly” or “ego-friendly” each stage was." Ego-friendly! Buzzword of the week. Clik Here

Earth Day Craze; Susan Boyle Skeptics; Oprah's Twitter Bump

Maximize your browsers and minimize your energy consumption: it's time to recap the week in Earth Day blogging, among other things.

The wondrous Big Picture blog pulls together 40 stunning, oversized images showing people doing things on, and to, our fave planet, Earth. In that spirit (sorta) Environmental Graffiti offers pics of the the 10 most incredible globes (two are chocolate!).

Mashable is inspired to present five inspiring Earth day videos that are worth the energy they consumed to produce—one is about regrowing a rainforest. Think eco-greenies are all work and no play? No? Well think they have no sense of humor? HuffPo compiles a video montage of the best Earth Day jokes.

Of course, others went green by shopping responsibly. Clutch rounds up "the most amazing green products on the market" and offers a mini-glossary of green-marketing buzzwords like "organic" and "green" (it's "a philosophy").
Consumerist has an Earth Day edition of its daily deals with eco-friendly bargains ("Free Roll Of Recycled Foil Wrap "), unfortunately followed by not-so-Earth-friendly merchandise (shampoo).
Clik Here