Just for fun we did a search across Craigslist job postings in some cities around the US to see how many listings mentioned Twitter in each location. The top city this month? New York City, with 196 jobs welcoming Twitter use. If you live in Bismarck, North Dakota though - no one on Craigslist is looking for Twitter users on the clock.

1. New York City, NY: 196
2. San Francisco, CA: 159
3. Boston, MA: 115
4. Seattle, WA: 50
5. Chicago, IL: 50
6. Portland, OR: 41
7. LA, CA: 40
8. Austin, TX: 26
9. Dallas, TX: 17
10. Phoenix, AZ: 11

• Houston, TX: 11
• Denver, CO: 6
• Philadelphia, PA: 4
• Boulder, CO: 2
• Zero in Bismarck, ND

None the less, it's a fun list and may say a rough something about social media adoption by businesses in different places. Businesses that are down with the internet are generally down with the Twitter, it's emblematic of adult social media use these days. Most of the jobs listed were for marketers who would broadcast over Twitter, but customer service jobs were well represented too. There's a whole world of business opportunity on Twitter that's based on listening, but that will take a while to catch on.

Of course not all of these are good jobs - would you want to be "a full-time, experienced social media expert" working for $10 an hour? How would you like to be a community manager for a company that's raised $6 million in high-profile venture capital? "This is a part time unpaid job for 3-4 months that could lead to a full time position. Around 20hrs per week, but must come every day to the office." Times are tough, but those positions are a far cry from what some top bloggers and social media consultants are making. There could be some real gems hidden in these listings, though, and it would be interesting to study rates of pay in social media by location.

Are there any secret enclaves we didn't think to look in? Let us know if your town is unlisted but has a substantial number of search results in the jobs section for Twitter this month.

In the mean-time, see you in Boston!

See Also:
Reading Blogs at Work: Why You Should Do It & How You Can Make it Worthwhile

Working bird illustration by Pasquale D'Silva.

Weezer released its latest album today, with a Snuggie. See the video below.

Fans interested in the music alone can purchase the album sans blanket-with-arms for a mere $9 on Amazon. (Update: $4 today - sale!)

It's pretty funny, really. People do seem more willing to buy these ridiculous blankets with arms than they are to pay for music these days. I think that's the point.

Thanks to Yahoo's Christian Heilmann for bringing this to our attention.

The app also offers easy download of the company's video and audio podcasts and easy sharing on Facebook and Twitter. It's definitely worth the 99 cents they are charging for it. Unless you're broke, in which case don't bother.

Will this "flip through the stories" application end up making more money than Google's too-serious (yet light-weight) Fast Flip, launched yesterday? That doesn't seem outside the realm of possibilities.

FriendFeed product manager Dan Hsiao and company intern Ross Miller released a short video today from deep inside the core of that innovative company that Facebook just paid $50m in cash and stocks to purchase. Now that FriendFeed has had its exit, the staff must feel comfortable opening up a little to the world and letting us see what really goes on there.

We thought it was elves, but this is probably the most scalable solution available. Just snap on more of the same infrastructure and you're ready to rock and roll.

Think you know where catchwords like FTW and Fail! came from? Think you know who came up with the phrase Web 2.0? Do you know what the first Rickrolled link claimed to be? We did some hunting around to find out - below are our best ideas for the history of these and other popular terms around the web these days.

FTW

FTW is most commonly understood as standing for "For the Win!" The Urban Dictionary says it entered popular culture via the TV show Hollywood Squares. The show featured two contestants playing a trivia based tic-tac-toe game where the squares had celebrities siting in them who "helped" answer the questions.

The final question to complete the tic-tac-toe was asked "for the win..." The show ran from 1966 through 1981 but there were several attempts to revive it.

Fail!

Now a one word sentence primarily used to mock, sometimes with a touch of sympathy, the prominent use of the word "Fail" is said to derive from 1998 arcade game Blazing Star. According to an article from this Fall in Slate, "its staying power comes from its wonderfully terrible Japanese-to-English translations. If you beat a level, the screen flashes with the words: 'You beat it! Your skill is great!' If you lose, you are mocked: 'You fail it! Your skill is not enough! See you next time! Bye bye!'"

See also the relatively new FailBlog.org, a daily collection of unintentionally funny images and videos with very simple captions.

Right: The cycles of history have a cruel sense of humor.

Rickroll

From the consistently obscene fringe message board 4chan to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! Who would have ever thought a joke like this would go so far?

According to the Wikipedia entry on the phenomenon, the practice of telling someone you're linking to one thing and then linking instead to the Rick Astley video Never Going to Give You Up was originally based on a practice known as Duckrolling. The link would claim to be to a news item or some other thing but would instead take visitors to a web page containing a photoshopped picture of a duck on wheels. Hey look, it's a duck...with wheels.

The first Rickroll ever, Wikipedia dutifully reports, was a May 2007 link on 4chan that claimed to be to a mirror copy of the original trailer for the game Grand Theft Auto IV, which was otherwise unavailable.

4chan is also believed to be the origin of Lolcats.

Eating Our Own Dogfood

You often hear about technology companies "eating their own dogfood," which means using their own software to get work done. According to the book Inside Out: Microsoft in Our Own Words, the phrase came from Microsoft's Paul Maritz. Maritz had seen an Alpo dog food commercial where actor Lorne Greene told viewers that Alpo was so good he...fed it to his own dogs! Neither Greene nor Maritz apparently ate dogfood themselves, but Maritz did use the phrase in an email calling for Microsoft workers to use their own products more.

Dorky executives have felt like a little "edgy" using the phrase ever since.

Web 2.0

Many people think that Tim O'Reilly, book publisher and founder of the Web 2.0 Conference, coined the term Web 2.0. Last month O'Reilly mentioned in a PBS Science radio interview, though, that some one who worked for him actually came up with the phrase to articulate some concepts the O'Reilly himself had been discussing.

We did a little hunting around and got to what's apparently the truth. More than 3 years ago Tim wrote an article titled What is Web 2.0:
Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software where he says that it was O'Reilly VP Dale Dougherty who came up with the moniker in early 2004. (Photo of Dougherty, left, by David A. Mellis) How many of you got that trivia question right? At the time Dougherty was the Editor and Publisher of O'Reilly's Make magazine, so he was no stranger to invention.

So there you go. Now you don't have to be a wall flower at parties any more, for fear of not knowing the history of these five terms. Or are the conclusions we've drawn here incorrect? If you've got reason to believe so...speak up now!

For 2008, Google has included a few more jingle bells and whistles. You can track St. Nicholas from your phone with Google Maps for mobile by activating the service and searching for "norad santa." And what 2008 holiday would be complete without a Twitter entity? You can also get tweets from Santa by following @noradsanta.

Even if you're not into celebrating Xmas, this spectacle showcases an interesting application of available technology - and a test for scalability as millions of users pummel the Google servers for information on Mr. C. Stepping back, this always leads me to wonder what would happen if this same type of thinking were applied to other quandaries of tracking and informing the public. Using all of these methods to track Santa Claus could prove very informative for any number of applications.

But enough of that Grinch/Scrooge thinking.

This marks the fourth year Google has participated in the tracking effort. And there's a great backstory to the Santa-tracking tradition at Google.

This seems to be as good of a time as any for us to say, "Thank you." Happy holidays from all of us here at ReadWriteWeb. All the best to you and yours. And whether you're among those who are hoping for a visit from Santa Claus or not, may all of your wishes come true - and if they don't, you'll know where to track down the big guy, thanks to Google.

Photo "Santa Claus" by Grzegorz Łobiński used under Creative Commons

So it's a good time to take a quick look at some fun facts and trivia surrounding Thanksgiving. Please enjoy.

According to the National Turkey Foundation, approximately 690 million pounds of turkey were consumed in the United States during Thanksgiving 2007. This equals the weight of 4.48 million individuals of average weight (154 pounds); the population of Singapore as estimated by the last census in 2005.

2. Mary Had a Little Lamb Author Helped Make Thanksgiving a National Holiday

Sarah Josepha Hale is credited as the person most responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday in the United States. She also authored Mary Had a Little Lamb.

3. Benjamin Franklin: Turkey More Respectable than Bald Eagle

Benjamin Franklin, who proposed the turkey as the official United States' bird, was not happy when the bald eagle was chosen instead. In a letter to his daughter, Franklin referring to the eagle's "bad moral character," said: "For my own part I wish the Eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country" and "For in Truth, the Turk'y is in comparison a much more respectable bird and withal a true original native of America".

4. Franklin Roosevelt Thanksgiving Controversy

In 1939, Franklin Roosevelt changed Thanksgiving to a week earlier than usual so the Christmas shopping season would last longer. There was a tremendous outpouring of public disapproval over the next two years so, in 1941 he admitted his mistake and officially declared the fourth Thursday in November a national holiday for Thanksgiving.

5. Worlds Largest Turkey

The Worlds largest turkey sits just off Route 10, Frazee, MN (Map), also known as the turkey capital of the world.

6. Aldrin and Armstrong First Lunar Meal was Turkey

According to the National Turkey Foundation, when Armstrong and Aldrin sat down to eat their first meal on the moon, their foil food packets contained roasted turkey.

7. Freeze Dried Feast for Astronauts

The seven Endeavour astronauts and three space station crew members enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, cornbread stuffing and green beans.

You've seen this done with church signs and parking tickets, but check out this particular manifestation of the personalization meme. I'm guessing that many of you will want to send it to friends and family. Hopefully at least 51% of you.

Feel the self-blame (and get some good laughs) via the MoveOn.org home page. Thanks to RWW team member Dionne Fox for finding this. I can only imagine what the Republican equivalent would look like.

"ReadWriteWeb" 5x's Really Fast on 12seconds.tv

MacTyler almost gets there, so close! At the end he slaps himself in the face (that's what the screenshot above is). This was his second attempt, his first is here.

Read Write Web Challenge 2 on 12seconds.tv

A bearded reader called beach makes a hash of it.

read write web challenge (5x fast) on 12seconds.tv

To add your entry, you can either click here for an invite to 12seconds.tv or use Seesmic. We have 500 invites for RWW readers to 12seconds.tv. Unfortunately though, the way the private beta invites are being given out isn't ideal. You have to fill in a brief survey and the invites are emailed out to you. But I did that and I haven't gotten mine yet! So if you'd like to participate and you don't get your invite soon, head over to Seesmic and upload your video there.

Whichever method you use, add the link in the comments below and we'll post the best ones!

Here's mine, via Seesmic:

Even after all these years of practice at saying ReadWriteWeb... but it was late on a Friday night and after a couple of beers ;-)

UPDATE: A few more entrants:

Seesmic founder Loïc Le Meur

mackenzey (maybe not quite fast enough)

RWW x5 fast on 12seconds.tv

pixites (ok this is a little scary)

rww on 12seconds.tv

nclüdr uses "advanced synchronization algorithms" to create and maintain your profile for you. That means that not only is nclüdr the most social social network, it is also the easiest to use -- it does pretty much all the work for you.

Because nclüdr one ups Facebook and MySpace at every turn, it also has one of the slickest application libraries we've seen. According to the site's developer page, there are already millions of app developers working on the site every day. Some of our favorite apps include: "Which Tom Selleck Moustache Are You?," "My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad," and "Be A Call Center Worker" -- we're already engaged in an epic battle of "Support" vs. "Sales" with a billion of our closest friends.

Clearly, nclüdr is a parody site and not a real social network, but we thought it was the funniest web 2.0 joke we've seen since First Life. This review? Also a joke.

The beauty of Twitter is in its simplicity. Its magic comes from the endless creativity of its users. What started as a primitive way of telling people what you were up to, evolved into a global, distributed, multi-platform communication channel, a web-wide conversation, and new communication medium. In this post, we take a look of how you can kill a Friday night (and many other nights!) just playing around with Twitter. Caution, some of these could be very addictive!

1. Calculate your Twitter Score

The Twitter network, like most natural networks, has nodes of different weight. Most people have a handful of followers, but follow a lot of other people. Because a lot of people follow Jack Dorsey, Fred Wilson, Tim O'Reilly and other web celebrities, the network is far from being symmetric. Mathematically speaking, there is a power law at play here, more commonly known as 80-20 rule - that is, 80% of the people follow the other 20% of the people.

So it is interesting to calculate where exactly you fall on that curve. One simple way to do this is to take a ratio of people who follow you to the number of people you follow. Currently my score is 156/16 which is 9.75, Jack Dorsey's score is 8.02, Fred Wilson's score is 14.7 and Tim O'Reilly gets 42.6! Tell us your Twitter number in the comments.

2. Typecast Yourself and Your Friends

One step beyond computing score is figuring out the different types of people on Twitter. Visualizing follow and following as nodes in the network gets you three major types of characters: Talkers, Listeners and Hubs. Talkers are the people that have a lot of followers but do not follow a lot of people. Listeners are the opposite and the hubs are actually the ones that do both. Think of Twitter as a large network for information dissemination. It typically starts with talkers, flows through the hubs and ends up at listeners. So now the fun part - figure out your own type and the types of your friends.

3. Play Ego Wars

If you are less mathematically inclined and all of these calculations are making you dizzy, here's a game that you might like - ego wars. First, go and look at people who you follow and cross out the ones that follow you (you are even with them). The game is to get the people you follow that don't currently return the favor to follow you. It's tough, but here is an idea:

Pick a target, and then go see who this person follows. Follow all of these people (but make sure to keep track). The chances are that some of these people will automatically follow you. Now, the person who you are really after is going to see you in more and more places. It's a long shot, but worth a try. Two more bits: do not forget to unfollow all of these people once your mission is accomplished. And if this seems too hard, then just make sure every one of your tweets is the most awesome thing ever and people will follow you naturally.

4. Use Twitter to Meet New People

A sure way to combat boredom is let in a little serendipity. You can discover new people on Twitter through your follow list. First pick a person you follow and scan their follow list until you find someone you do not know. Follow them. Now repeat the same thing for your entire follow list.

How much can you infer about a random person by reading their front page? Quite a lot actually. There are people who tweet big ideas, there are those who write down details, people who pour out their relationships and those, like Marshall Kirkpatrick, who use Twitter to stay on top of the crazy tech world. Spend time flipping through people's profiles. What types of people do you bump into?

Now if you want to find total strangers (people multiple degrees removed from you), here is the way to do it. Keep clicking on people's lists until you end up on a page where you don't recognize a single face. You've reached a cluster of people that are connected to you through a very thin channel. So now, if you are up for it, you can engage with strangers!

Engage with strangers via the @reply. Sending total strangers personal messages sounds little like spam, but there's no spam box on Twitter and if you post something interesting you are likely to find new friends. Could you use Twitter to form business relationships? LinkedIn messages are way too formal for random chats, but on Twitter you could start a friendly chat that leads to a business contact. Has anyone tried that? And what about getting a date, any reports of clever tweets out there that lead to dating?

5. Push The Limits of Twitter and Your Brain

This is an interesting experiment game - get your Twitter client to roll updates non stop, then keep adding people at random and check how often you get an update. With just a handful of people you are likely to get an update every hour. Now how many people do you need to add to get an update every 15 minutes? Every minute? Every second? If anyone tries this, then the Twitter team is likely to hire you as the best stress tester ever. But seriously, on a slow night, just add a few more people to your list and it will be more fun.

Conclusion

These are just a handful of things that you can do with Twitter to have fun. And there many many more. Some of the more wild ideas that did not make it into the post were: Twitter every minute until every one of your followers unsubscribes or Send messages in Morse Code or Turn Twitter into a casino (or drinking game) by betting on when messages on a particular topic will appear.

Give some of these ideas a try and tell us your Twitter score, personality, and of course, the games that you like to play on Twitter.

Today, being Thanksgiving (a major US holiday) is no different. All three have spruced up their logos in the celebratory spirit (they are the only members of the "big 5" search engines to do so). Presented below are the Thanksgiving day logos from Google, Yahoo! and Ask. [Correction: AOL also has a holiday logo, and the post has been updated to include it!] Which is your favorite? Which company consistently provides the best holiday logo modifications? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Google's logos have for a long time been drawn by in-house graphic designer Dennis Hwang. Today, Hwang is in charge of all of Google's web masters, but designing logo doodles is still about 20% of his job. This year, Google takes a traditional approach with a couple of turkeys sitting down to a Thanksgiving meal (but, I wonder what they're eating?).

Yahoo!

For the past few years, Yahoo! has taken to using Flash to animate its holiday logos. That makes for some really fun results, and today is no exception. Their Thanksgiving logo includes a cornucopia spilling traditional holiday fare, and some food (corn, potatoes, pumpkin, pie) that is magically transformed into a group of happy dancers by a falling buckle hat. A bit odd? You bet, but it's a lot of fun, too.

Ask

Ask has always been sort of the odd man out, doing things their own way. Not content to modify their logo, they often modify their entire page. Today's page sports a background made of turkey (well, a very close up picture of a turkey). Honestly, it's a bit creepy -- I mean, really, whose turkey is that shiny in real life?

AOL

Thanks to reader Boris who pointed out that AOL does indeed have a holiday logo (I had only checked their search page -- whoops!). Presented below in all its plainness, AOL's holiday alteration is certainly the most "safe" on our list. A buckle hat and some fallen leaves. Cute, but hardly lighting the world on fire (or inspiring acid flashbacks, like one of the logos above -- wait, maybe that's a good thing).

Which is your favorite? Do you know of any other sites that decorate for the holidays? Let us know in the comments!

As the graphic to the right shows, the #1 and #10 song for sale at Amazon today is '1 2 3 4' by Feist. Why does this relatively obscure Canadian indie rock singer have two of the top ten best selling tracks on Amazon? Presumably because her single was recently featured in the new Apple iPod Nano commercials, which actually propelled her onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time (#61 on September 20th).

See our coverage of AmazonMP3 by Marshall Kirkpatrick, and also check out the coverage at our network blog last100. Check out the iPod Nano commercial below:

Link via Reuben Schwarz.

Update: Here's Josh Catone-Simpson...

Here are the top ten reasons I could think of:

10. Your Alexa ranking is so low that it actually drops below the horizontal axis.

9. You are the number 1 result in Google for "blogorrhoea".

8. You never get any links from A-listers, despite constantly linking to them. Well there was that one time when Mike Arrington linked to you in his diary blog Crunchnotes, but he used the 'nofollow' tag.

7. Your commentary on new products and services is so bad that even web 2.0 PR companies refuse to email you.

6. Valleywag doesn't merely ignore you, it laughs about you behind your back on supr.c.ilio.us.

5. You once got a mention on Steve Rubel's blog, but in a post entitled 'How NOT to blog' (and he refused to link to you).

4. You once tried to be a Snarky blogger, but all the other snarky bloggers then turned snarky on you and you ended up converting to a new religion to recover.

3. You've tried being controversial in order to gain attention, especially with a memorable post entitled 'Why Web 2.0 is like the Hindenburg Blimp', but nobody took the bait.

2.  Your Technorati rank has 8 figures in it.

1. According to Gabe Rivera's algorithms, tumbleweeds have a better chance of making it onto Tech.Memeorandum than your blog.

Photo: wonderbread74