The most "polite" thing about Rob Thomas' snub of the president was probably the way he tweeted it years later for maximum humiliation.

Tech entrepreneur Jack Dorsey hearts Twitter. Whoever invented that thing deserves mad props.

Jennifer 8. Lee may work for the New York Times, but her sometime Googler-boyfriend Craig Silverstein actually prefers the bagels in Montreal. A lot. Fact checking is called for, clearly.

Judging from this posting at Overheard Newsroom, there's at least one reporter out there whose pitches are WAY more engrossing than yours. Or whose blowjobs are WAY worse. Either way.

Sarah Silverman might be depressed, but at least she started a cool Twitter-tag meme.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Wonderwall's Alex Blagg was just trying to be social, geeez.

Print media is to remain in its room until it feels well enough to stop destroying the company. Wired.com's Brian X. Chen didn't specifically say that, but it's the sort of Si Newhouse conference call we like to imagine.

Ubiquitous Silicon Valley flack Brooke Hammerling, recently tweeting from Mexico, got burned by some kind of suave foreigner.

TechCrunch's Sarah Lacy, recently tweeting from India, said overemotional self-centered Americans could learn a thing or two from waking up in another country. Let's hope so!

Lt. Dangle's R&B career was stillborn

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Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Silicon Valley flack Brooke Hammerling must have a $1,000 tiny pig. And not for breakfast, either.

The New York Times' Nick Bilton can't believe some idiots will pay $1,000 for a tiny pig. And not even for breakfast or whatever!

Paul Carr learned to love San Francisco cabbies all over again on his way (apparently) to lunch with fellow TechCrunch contributor Sarah Lacy.

GigaOM's Om Malik is loving his new 'hood. So many friends. So few bloody tourists.

SF Appeal's Eve Batey loves Oakland and environs for their avian kink. We think.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Elliot Holt of One Story Magazine brought squirrel porn into the microblogging era. Small animals, small medium. Appropriate!

Marissa Mayer quoted Tom Clancy. We'd never have pegged the Google bigwig as a fan of techno-thrillers, but her and Clancy both strive to make them.

Jennifer 8. Lee's source wish list read eerily like Julia Allison's blogger wish list. We tried not to think about it.

Silicon Valley PR maven Brooke Hammerling might have grown up in New York, but she'll always be a California girl at heart. Judging from her taste in music, at least.

Former Googler Kevin Marks, a social networking guy, took a dig at the type of software that actually makes people more productive.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

iLike became something of an icon for a certain class of startup: Built on social networks, fast-growing, unprofitable, advertising supported. The company's impending sale to MySpace at a fire-sale price could hardly be a bigger wakeup call to these fellow makers of software "widgets."

The company was once valued at $53 million, back when Ticketmaster bought a 25 percent stake in late 2006, according to the Seattle Times. iLike amassed a total of $17 million from Ticketmaster and other investors like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and former AOL exec Bob Pittman. Now it's negotiating to sell for just $19.5 million, All Things D reports, and $6 million of that is contingent on retaining certain employees in coming months.

It's quite comedown. But it's easy to see how iLike became a media darling and a hero to other makers of widgets. In the late spring of 2007, iLike ported its music recommendation service to Facebook, and in the process spiked its user base dramatically, to 15 million from 3 million over six months. In one week just after the Facebook launch, four venture capitalists asked CEO Ali Partovi (pictured) to lunch, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported; the company reportedly added close to 200 servers over the course of the summer.

After retaining insidery Silicon Valley flack Brooke Hammerling, iLike saw its praises sung widely in the media (emphasis added):

• Wall Street Journal, June 2007: "'Somebody's going to end up being the Facebook music service,' [co-founder Hadi Partovi] says. 'It's either going to be us, in which case we're made, or it's not.'" (By the time Patrovie gave this retrospective quote, iLike was by far the dominant music service on Facebook.)
• Billboard, July 2007: "The smart money says someone will acquire iLike, and soon. The company's social media discovery capabilities are a natural extension to any digital music service, particularly iTunes."
  
• BusinessWeek, July 2007:"'Widgets are a fundamentally important idea,' says Vinod Khosla... who has invested in two widget makers, Slide and iLike. 'I believe it has the potential to create big billion-dollar winners.'"
• Forbes, October 2007: "Says Khosla [Ventures]'s David Weiden: 'Widgets are the next kind of media network.'"
• USA Today, November 2007: "The company... has become an overnight sensation... Dave McClure, an angel investor in Silicon Valley, wouldn't be shocked if iLike... and others eventually go public."

Revenue was presumably slow in coming, though, because by fall of the following year iLike was said to be trying to sell itself and Ticketmaster wrote off half the value of its investment. Now investors are basically trying to break even with the MySpace sale. The music and advertising businesses have their own unique problems, but startups in other hot sectors, like iPhone apps, should beware: The excitement can dissipate as quickly as it inflates.

(Pic: Niall Kennedy)

Boa-bedecked media horror Laurel Touby was stymied in her real-estate quest by husband Jon Fine's raging metrosexuality.

Bicoastal tech execuwrangler Brooke Hammerling outed Gawker alumnus Lockhart Steele as a non-porn star.


TechPresident blog blowhard Micah Sifry waxed Foucauldian.

Brazen divorcist Penelope Trunk contemplated barter.

Technology Review Twitterer-in-chief Jason Pontin thought about the poor, but only for 140 characters.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

Bicoastal tech PR maven Brooke Hammerling broke up with her BlackBerry.

Technology Review Twitterer-in-chief Jason Pontin let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Blogger Penelope Trunk abbreviated her relationship.

Former Condé Nast dealmaker Kourosh Karimkhany had an encounter with celebrity San Francisco crazy dude Frank Chu.

Chris Lehmann, better known as Mr. Ana Marie Cox, confused Elizabeth Edwards with Maureen Dowd.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

Daily Beast West Coast editor Tom Tapp did his laundry at 11 a.m.

Reporter-pimping rapscallion Dan Abrams felt vaguely annoyed at Rachel Sklar. (We've all been there, Dan. She's everywhere!)

Tech blogger Harry McCracken overthought Twitter.

Snacky tech superflack Brooke Hammerling let the weather get her down.

Farm and Dairy editor Susan Crowell had a cow over milking online users. Ba-dum-bum!

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please — or email us your favorite tweets.

Could it possibly be because she's not happy with the numbers that ComScore is reporting for her client — or, worse, the numbers NextNewNetworks is asking her to pitch? I'd like to point out the Association for Downloadable Media is giving a presentation on video advertising standards tomorrow at Ad:tech. Maybe Hammerling should give them her support instead of taking passive-aggressive stabs at companies working in the space. That seems easier.

Here's the back story. Marc Bodnick, a cofounder of Elevation Partners, the private-equity firm behind Forbes, where Lyons has a day job, suggested plugged-in matchmaker Brooke Hammerling to make high-level introductions in the Valley. This move, insiders say, confounded Lyons's publisher, Da Capo Press, which had its own PR operation, and momentarily threw plans for the party out of joint. Hammerling vehemently denies there was any friction. Da Capo ended up handling press for Lyons's book tour, and Hammerling and the book publisher threw a joint party at Frisson, the restaurant part-owned by Facebook board member Peter Thiel.

Thiel, alas, didn't show, but San Francisco's tech press corps turned out in droves, and in the case of videoblogger Natali Del Conte, kickass boots. Also crowding the joint: a bevy of Lyons's Forbes colleagues, past and present, and backers from Elevation Partners. Digg board member Brett Bullington no-commented his way through the evening. An unusually buttoned-up Hammerling, when she wasn't schmoozing, was ringing up copies of Options for Lyons to sign.

True Ventures, the firm which counts WordPress maker Automattic and tech-blog network GigaOm among its holdings, hosted people at its offices on Pier 38 right by the Bay Bridge. Spotted at the party: GigaOm reporters Katie Fehrenbacher and Liz Gannes in conversation with Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb. The effortlessly charming Jared Kopf of AdRoll tried to duck having a specific launch date for his ad software company. (Before December 31, he promised.) On my way out the door, I spied First Round Capital VC Josh Kopelman chatting with angel investor Ron Conway, VC Stewart Alsop, and TeeBeeDee's Robin Wolaner. (I recognized Wolaner because she recently blogged about having eye surgery complete with mid-surgery pictures. Ew! In a Discovery Channel can't-stop-looking sort of way.)

I spoke with Kopelman for a moment as he explained the reason why he tried indoor skydiving — the activity which broke his shoulder. His wife thought it seemed safer than the zero-gravity flights currently in vogue with the Sand Hill set. Oops.

Onto the Rickshaw Stop across town, to a music session for hacks and flacks. The open mike jam session starred jounalist rock star Don Clark of the Wall Street Journal and Kevin Maney of Portfolio. Here's a secret for you — whenever Don Clark plays, a gaggle of PR fans mob the audience. Last night? No different. Spotted in the crowd, flacks from big firms, like Voce Communications, and PR consultants aplenty. Ali Partovi, founder of music application service iLike, came out to support the scene. PR goddess Brooke Hammerling appeared and greeted Le Web 3 conference producer Cathy Brooks effusively.

To SoMa and Fluid for the the last stop of the night, where Mike Jung of Panorama Capital and Eric Chin of Bay Partners brought together alums from their Alpha dinners in Woodside for a drink special. Spotted: First Round Capital director Howard Morgan, who spoke briefly about his investment into the Zero-G airlines. (He's been on three of those flights already!) The crowd was full of founders. Among the crowd were Mint's Aaron Patzer, HotorNot founder James Hong, former Greylock VC turned Chirpscreen founder Eve Phillips and the guy blowing kisses above, PBWiki founder David Weekly. Eric and Mike told me that they aim to have their Alpha dinners bring together founders and VCs with a common thread, with the hopes of making connections that pay off. And it's happened. Oren Michels of Mashery reports that his widget-software startup received a check in the midst of one of the Alpha dinners. The Alpha luck might have struck again. At the end of the night, Mike Jung snuck away for a phone call. Rumor was that a deal was in the works. Heard anything about it? Let us know.