baratunde.com

Last week at the Mashable Media Summit, I had the opportunity to reflect upon the current and future states of the news business. I was very proud to announce that Onion News Network will be releasing news from the year 2137 in an exclusive paid download later this summer. 

You can find out when the show will be available by signing up with your e-mail address or following @ONNFutureNews on Twitter.

Last Thursday evening, i was invited to a promotional Motorola event in NYC. They were unveiling the Motoblur set of Android phones and had gathered a bunch of twitterific geeks to showcase (and hand out) the new devices. Hip hop group Freestyle Love Supreme was the entertainment, and they were really, really good.

I was already impressed with them going through each member of the party's tweets live and integrating it into a pretty coherent rhyme, when they stepped it up. After asking for a recommendation for a celebrity, Rachel Sklar said "Justin Bieber."

We all looked at her like she was crazy, and folks starting yelling out other names. Then someone yelled, "Baratunde!" So the group decided to do a rhyme about me. They'd also asked for a city, and New Orleans won, so the second half is about NOLA.

They pulled up this website where the most recent post was me celebrating the massacre of all my Facebook friends, and they also managed to integrate references to my stunt at the 14th Street Apple Store on iPad Day as well as the book I'm working on called "How To Be Black."

If I ever had a TV commercial, I would make it be this.

Oh, and I have a Motorola Backflip phone, I'll be giving away, probably to a member of my email list. Not sure what will qualify folks, but join up to find out!

I did it!! I fucking did it!! I manually deleted all my Facebook friends.

And here's what the home screen looks like when you have ZERO FRIENDS! So clean! I love this. I really, really love this. Facebook is so much more awesome with zero friends.

As some of you know, I made a big stink of my need to reboot my Facebook experience. I feared outright account deletion because of my dependence on Facebook Connect to log in to various apps and sites. Plus I have a lot of tagged photos I wasn't quite ready to leave. Plus, honestly, I have a small amount of pride in my low member number (#2244). 

The problem was deleting over 4,500 people would have taken 20 hours, but I found a few greasemonkey scripts that helped. I also figured it would be faster for all my friends to delete me once than for me to delete them 4,500 times, so I asked everyone to unfriend me. Unfortunately, people don't take orders very well on Facebook.

I think maybe 300 people unfriended me. Many more tried but couldn't figure out how. Some even protested and refused to unfriend me, staging some sort of sit-in on my profile! And then today, one of my co-workers put me on to the Edit Friends option under "Account" when you're logged in. I was deleting two friends per second!

I feel like I've been given a new lease on life. I'm Facebook born again!!

By the numbers: 

• when I started, I had about 4,700 friends and 1,200 fans of my page
• today I have 0 friends and 1,800 fans of my page

It's a major hit in overall Facebook impact, and it will take time to push people toward the Page, but it's worth it for a more sane experience. I'd really like to thank Aaron Karo, who told me to do this months ago, but I refused, thinking there was a better way. I was wrong.

Now, enjoy this recent South Park episode titled "You Have 0 Friends"

This is it people. I posted the following as an event on Facebook, trying to give as many of my friends notice as possible. Shit is long cause Facebook is unnecessarily hella confusing.

I'm going to delete my Facebook account and start all over.

Click to read more ...

It's 34 minutes including Q&A. Thanks to Vimeo for letting me upload long things

Baratunde Keynotes the Sidwell Friends Mother-Son Dinner (in HD!) from baratunde on Vimeo.

Took place on May 8, 2010. Includes reflections on Mother's Day from The Onion, memories of Sidwell, the (partial) story of Arnita Thurston and Q&A with senior boys and their mothers.

I apologize that I can't write each of you one by one, but know that I'm writing this note with care, and that you were selected with purpose. Please read and consider participating in whatever way you can.

Get your tickets now

Click to read more ...

via nickmcglynn.com

That definitely looks like me. And I'm in a hot tub with women, all of us in our underwear. The only thing missing is hair gel. 

Thanks Foursquare for a great par-tay.

I love the web/streaming/podcast tech show "This Week In Tech" hosted by Leo Laporte. It was the second podcast I started listening to (after Adam Curry's Daily Source Code), and I still listen every single week. I'm a fan first. A few months back, I was invited on the show, and I nearly lost my shit. I told Leo in an email that, while I was quite excited to have my own TV show on Science Channel, I was more excited to be a guest on TWiT.

I stand by that statement. The show is fun, interesting and informative. Anyone involved in any way in Internet-based tech should tune in regularly.

This past week, I once again did the show from its headquarters at the "TWiT Cottage" in Petaluma, CA. I was on with Brian Brushwood and Veronica Belmont, and it was hands down my favorite media appearance. Sometimes TWiT can get too unruly with crosstalk. Sometimes the show lingers too long on a single topic. Sometimes the guests just don't click that well.

This was not one of those times. Brian and I had an amazingly fun, respectful exchange about the politics of net neutrality and politics in general (he's libertarian; i'm liberal (aka "socialist" nowadays)). Veronica kept us grounded and had some great insight and deadly wit. Leo was consummate Leo. 

Check it out for yourselves via this youtube link. You can get the audio podcast and more at TWIT.tv.

Hey folks, Last Friday, I was invited to discuss the economy and job numbers with John King on his new CNN show. (Sorry it's taken so long to post, but I've been juggling a few things). I was surprised by the quality of the conversation, to be honest. I'm used to these cable shows throwing up a Brady Bunch-style, talking head smackdown, and this segment was nothing like that. It consisted of an unexpectedly well-produced segment about the loss of industrial jobs and its effects on the black community plus John and I talking both about unemployment and the contrast of that to extreme compensation for the bankster class. Here's the original segment. As I'm starting to do by habit, I've recorded a video response to get into a bit more detail about some of the ideas I wanted to communicate.

And here's my response... to myself :) Some references backing up the points I was making

• The Washington Independent has a great article citing that IMF report on banks, lobbying, risky behavior and poor performance
• Nice piece by Les Leopold at Alternet on the guaranteed billionaire bailout we've created with the banks