ReadWriteWeb

This week's ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup is chock-full of stories this week, so lets not waste any time recapping the top posts of the last week of February. We've got tips for keeping out the trolls, some advice for naming your startup, best methods for weeding out programming applicants, and an example of how Google Buzz can be used by startups to engage users. Also, our Never Mind the Valley series is back in full swing this week with profiles of Washington D.C. and Chicago.

In the summer of 2008, J.R. Johnson sold Virtual Tourist to Expedia for $85 million dollars. While Johnson seems like the type of laid back Los Angeles entrepreneur that would take some vacation time, his quest for relevancy had him launching a new community the following March. Lunch.com is Johnson's attempt to cut through the noise that has proliferated since he first started in the user-generated-review space in 1999.

Says Johnson, "When I started, people asked me why anyone would want to read an amateur review. Now the environment has changed and there's even pay-per-post happening across the net. Virtual Tourist is travel-specific and you increase relevancy by picking a niche topic on which to base your community. With Lunch I'm trying to solve something new." Johnson spoke to ReadWriteWeb about some of the ways he's managed to ensure that his community is more than just search engine bait.

Trolls: Those creepy, hyperaggresive, hateful, mouth-breathing basement-dwellers. They were a feature of the Internet long before the social web, and most of us feel they're probably here to stay.

But one of the things most trolls rely on is anonymity, a wall behind which they hide any information that could be used against them, including their jobs, locations, appearances and real names.
And anonymity is a not-so-slowly disappearing feature of the social web. What do you think: Will the rise of transparency and the fall of anonymity put trolls in the deadpool any time soon?

When we wrote our year end posts for 2009, we should've added patent trolling to our list of trends. In the past year we've covered a number of patent disputes including the Word-blocking patent against Microsoft and VoloMedia's patent on podcasting. Union Square Ventures' Brad Burnham wrote an excellent piece today on independent invention and how patent reform can minimize trolls.

A backlash against anonymous commenters and trolls seems to be underway. Only last month, a court case was settled where anonymous commenters ended up having to pay big fines to the women who they defiled using vulgar, derogatory remarks on an internet forum. And previously, an anonymous blogger in the modeling industry was forced to reveal her identity after numerous malicious posts about a colleague showed up on her blog. Now the latest scandal in this new trend of "giving the trolls what they deserve" is causing a controversy all of its own. And this time, the nasty comment didn't just lead to an embarrassing reveal or a heavy fine, it cost someone their job.

Two former Yale University law students have settled their suit brought against some 30-plus anonymous commenters who posted derogatory remarks about them on an internet forum called AutoAdmit. The comments, which ranged from standard insults to those of a more sexually explicit nature, were so vile they prompted the women to sue in order to out the identities of those doing the commenting. According to the plaintiffs, the suit was necessary because the discussion board, a site designed for law school graduates, was often monitored by firms looking to hire. Because the comments were associated with their names, the women claimed that it would hurt their chances of being offered a job.

Last month, we posed the question "are trolls ruining social media?" - a topic that seems to have reared its ugly head once again over the weekend, this time with a specific focus on FriendFeed and the supposed angry mobs that form there. But let's get real for a minute. Although it's shocking that some FriendFeed users post terrible, hurtful things while using their real names, posting angry and mean comments is nothing new to the internet. Other social communities, including Digg and YouTube, also deal with this issue - heck, they're even known for it!

But instead of continually pointing out the problem, maybe it's time for the innovators in our community to start thinking up solutions. Here's one we just thought up...let us know what you think.

What do you get when you combine a platform for creating user-generated video content with the micro-blogging sensation that is Twitter? According to 12seconds.tv, you get a viable business model for your company, a platform that allows brands to leverage Twitter for communication, and a way for everyday Twitter users to have fun and earn prizes. Does that sound like a win-win-win all around? It very well may be...or it may just be the first example of how Twitter is transforming from a fun, communication tool used among friends to a commercialized platform for mainstream marketing.

Conficker, the Internet worm that caused a mild panic reminiscent of Y2K late last month, but which failed to do anything spectacular that would have warranted the breathless coverage on 60 Minutes ("The Internet is Infected"), has finally woken up. This morning the worm  started to update itself via a peer-to-peer network between infected machines after downloading its payload from a server in South Korea.