Best of D.C. 2009

Twitter is the old media’s newest whipping boy. The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley compared the social networking application to a lab rat “gorging” itself to death on “a mountain of cocaine.” And while a few local media types do indeed resemble rodents when they twitter—CNN’s Rick Sanchez somehow went uncriticized after he tweeted, “what’d u think of that plane crash. wow! that was crazy. thought it would go under on my watch,” after US Airways Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson but before it was clear that everyone survived—Simon Owens is not one of them. Owens’ twitter beat spans media news (which he covers for PBS’ Mediashift site), marketing (which he does for New Media Strategies in Arlington), and Internet flotsam and jetsam. He’s no Cox, who regularly posts upward of 100 tweets a day, but Owens is just as savvy and a lot more likely to help new Twitterers get acquainted with the unwritten rules of the game. Rule No. 1: “If you’re following more than 500 people, you’re not really following anyone.”