Plagued by breakdowns — and by Robert Scoble — Twitter has hired Pivotal Labs to help it fix the messaging service. "Yes, we hired some smart folks from Pivotal Labs to join us in the office and get some work done," Twitter cofounder Biz Stone told VentureBeat. "Joining us in the office" sounds impressive, but it involves a five-block commute — Pivotal Labs, a software consultancy, is part of the insular San Francisco Web-startup scene that spawned Twitter in the first place. The Pivotal crew are old hands indeed at taking money from the Internet-flummoxed likes of Stone. How do I know this? Full disclosure: Pivotal executive Ian McFarland helped me launch a website — in 1995.

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