Facebook video chat trips up veteran users, Twitter lists are liferaft

by Bill Palmer

One of the odd things about having been on today’s popular social networks since the early days is that while those networks have significantly changed over the years, I’ve been reluctant to change the way I use them. Twitter since late 2006, Facebook since early 2007. In social media years, I’m older than Moses. It doesn’t mean I know anything more about how to use either network. It just means that I’ve seen more. I still want to use those networks like I used to back in the day. And at this point that may be a handicap.

Case in point: I still approve every Facebook friend request I receive, so long as the account appears to be a legitimate, real person. That habit started back in the day because when I first joined the network, it had just gone public and very few fellow non-college adults were on there. In other words, I’d take whatever “friends” were seeking me out, within reason, in the name of populating my Facebook page. Gradually, over the years, my (actual) friends, family, and colleagues have shown up and my 1700 Facebook “friends” are a mix of people I know and people I have yet to get to know. And that’s always worked. Except now, with the launch of facebook.com live chat, at least once a week someone “friends” me and, upon approving the request, they immediately want to live-chat with me. Placed on the spot, I have no way of knowing who they really are (Beatweek reader or random spammer, for instance) and so I nearly always ignore chat requests when they come from someone I don’t know. Even though I may have just approved them as a “friend,” that doesn’t mean I want to be their buddy – especially in my line of work when those trying to “sell me” on something will use any means they can come across; there’s nothing worse than being sucked into a sales pitch you didn’t know was a sales pitch. It’s left me in a position where I’m no longer inclined to approve Facebook friend requests without finding out specifically who the person is first. Maybe I should have started doing it that way a long time ago, but I’d been too busy trying to use the 2011 evolution of Facebook as if it were still 2007. The same thing has come up and bitten me on Twitter as well…

Actually, Twitter served up a liferaft for old timers like me. Back in the day, you followed back everyone who followed you. If it turned out their tweets weren’t to your liking, you’d quietly unfollow them later. But in those days the total numbers were manageable (Robert Scoble was considered king of Twitter because he alone had five thousand followers). These days the sheer number of people who end up following a frequently-tweeting account like mine is such that I finally had to turn off email notifications regarding new followers; they were in the hundreds per day. So now, not only am I not following back new people, I’m not even aware of who my new followers are unless I hear from them in a “reply” message. That’s fine, except I’m left with a back-catalog of fifteen thousand people or so whom I’ve “followed back” over the years out of habit (or during one misguided stretch, automation). Some of these people are pure spammers. Some of them tweet things I’m fundamentally opposed to reading about. And yet there they are, leaving me with a Twitter timeline which is literally unmanageable. Thankfully, Twitter’s “lists” feature bailed me out in that I now only pay attention to certain lists of various sizes. I make no apologies for that, either. Only so much time in the day. But the group of people I’m “following” on Twitter has no correlation to who I’m actually paying attention to. In fact I’m fairly certain there are people on the private lists I check with regularity that I’m not “following” publicly. And I wouldn’t be in this non-correlating mess if not for the fact that I jumped on board with Twitter so early that it was a different network and the unwritten rules read differently…

None of this is a complaint, nor an attempt at nostalgia. Both networks are infinitely more useful to me now that they’re well populated by the mainstream. After all, I choose my social networks by who all is there. In contrast, while the new Google+ has some technical promise, it’s of no value to me at present because of who all isn’t there. The old saying is that the pioneers get the arrows while the settlers who come later get the land. I have no regrets about having been an early adopter of Facebook and Twitter, even though the usage habits I picked up back in those early days have left me with baggage I now need to clean up. I’m just not as inclined to get involved with yet another social network, one where the arrows are still flying and there’s no meaningful land to be had – particularly now that the two reigning social networks include just about everyone I actually want to converse with (along with, clearly, even more people on top of that). Even if it does mean that I’m an old graybeard on those networks who’s still trying to adjust to what they’ve evolved into as opposed to what they once were.

Britney Spears Femme Fatale sees Christina Aguilera, Jordin Sparks praise

The new Britney Spears album Femme Fatale is, predictably, atop to the iTunes charts today on its day of release. But while Brit’s long awaited comeback record isn’t surprising anyone by selling well, some of the praise coming in for it is coming from surprising corners. Christina Aguilera, who has long been a Britney rival (at least professionally speaking, as the two were often compared to each other in their early career years), hopped on Twitter this morning to publicly tout Britney’s new record: “Hey @BritneySpears Congrats on Femme Fatale release! Can’t wait to see what you bring in the next video. xo – Xtina”

Two hours later, Britney responded in kind: “Thanks @TheRealXtina. Can’t wait to watch you on your new show. Hope we get to hear that voice on The Voice. -Brit”

The praise for Femme Fatale came from other circles. Jordin Sparks, who once served as Britney’s tour support, also made her feelings toward the new album clear: “Just bought @britneyspears new album! WHOOOO! Such good memories being on the Circus tour!” Fans also appear to be on board with the record by not only pushing it into the number one spot in iTunes today, but also by giving an average iTunes rating of four and a half stars out of five. Femme Fatale’s release-day success was predictable after its first two singles, Hold It Against Me and Till The World Ends, both found popularity ahead of the album’s release.

Charlie Sheen joins Twitter, slams Nancy Grace and Chuck Lorre (again)

It took Charlie Sheen all of one tweet on his brand new Twitter account to amass a third of a million followers today, which the newly “unemployed” (his word) actor taking to the social mediaverse after seeing production on his show Two And A Half Men halted. The show’s season came to a sudden end after Sheen, who has seen his share of personal troubles spill over into the public eye of late, attacked show creator Chuck Lorre in an interview last week.

Sheen’s first tweet was a twitpic in which he declared himself to be “winning,” just as his Twitter bio lists him as an “Unemployed Winner.” His account @charliesheen is in fact verified by Twitter, which means it’s really him as opposed to the several impostors who’ve claimed to be “Charlie Sheen” on Twitter of late, either for deceitful or satirical reasons. Sheen’s second tweet managed to take a backhanded swipe at Lorre while explaining just how thoroughly uninterested he is in fulfilling a certain interview request: “Just got invited to do the Nancy Grace show… I’d rather go on a long road trip with Chuck Lorre in a ’75 Pacer.”

Interestingly, Sheen has thus far chosen to follow a mere ten Twitter users, despite the hundreds of thousands he’s gained thus far today. Among those he’s currently following: Alyssa Milano, along with talk show hosts Piers Morgan and Howard Stern. We’re guessing Nancy Grace’s Twitter account won’t be added to that list any time soon. Or, for that matter, Chuck Lorre’s.

Oops: Lindsay Lohan tweets “Hello Facebook” to her Twitter followers

Lindsay Lohan just went on Twitter and tweeted “Hello Facebook. Yes, this is actually Lindsay. Welcome to my Facebook page!” Yeah, we don’t get it either. We’ll refrain from making any jokes about her alleged substance abuse issues keeping Lindsay from knowing which social network she’s on, as plenty of others on Twitter have already beaten us to it. But even as Lohan is facing the serious personal matter of being on trial for alleged theft, or whatever it is this time, there’s a very different angle here, and one which isn’t specific to Lindsay but was apparently highlighted by her social media faux pas today. Even as Twitter goes nuts trying to figure out what the hell she was talking about when she said “Hello Facebook” to her Twitter followers (in fact “Hello Facebook” is a trending topic on Twitter right now as a result of it), it appears it may have been more of a mechanical behind the scenes mix up, indicative of more and more users attempting, not so successfully, to use a single tool in order to push their message out to multiple social media platforms.

There are plenty of users (yours truly included) who have their Facebook page rigged to scrape their Twitter updates and auto-post them as Facebook status updates. The results are hit and miss, as Facebook will only pick up so many tweets within a given period of time, leaving users often unaware of which of their tweets made it over to Facebook until after the fact – and sometimes, things that were only meant for Twitter end up on Facebook as well, totally out of place there. In the case of Lindsay Lohan, her infamous “Hello Facebook” tweet came from a service called Who Say, which appears to be one of those services which allows users to enter one status update and have it push out to multiple social networks; her other tweets typically come from a web browser or from her BlackBerry app. So it’s possible Lindsay could have been legitimately attempting to post a welcome message on some new Facebook fan page of hers (although we can’t find it), without realizing that the message would also be posted on her Twitter account as well. Or maybe it’s unfair to blame Who Say, and instead it’s just Lindsay being Lindsay. But in any case, it’s more common than ever to see so much auto-cross-posting going on that many tweets on Twitter look like they were intended for Facebook or FriendFeed or vice versa.

Tease: Britney Spears says wait 12 days for Hold It Against Me video

Britney Spears continues to tease us. After spending years threatening to stage a comeback any time she wanted to, the pop star finally pushed out a lead single from her upcoming album in the form of Hold It Against Me, which has already propelled her back to the center of the music world’s attention. The song is topping iTunes, it’s topping radio, and even with all that accomplished, the accompanying music video is still floating out there in the ether, and now the teasing is intentional. “If I said you have to wait 12 more days, would you hold it against me?” Britney tweeted this morning, along with a link to another YouTube teaser (this one a whopping six seconds long) which doesn’t appear to necessarily include actual footage from the video. We’ll find out soon enough, or rather on February 17th, assuming the video doesn’t leak out prior to then. For those who’ve got six seconds to spare, here’s the teaser. Here’s more on Britney Spears.

Kanye West tweets Britney Spears, pokes fun at his own past faux pas

Kanye West has made light of his own past in his latest tweet, which references the fact that the new Britney Spears song “Hold It Against Me” has skyrocketed to the number one position ahead of his own new collaboration with Jay-Z. Posting publicly on Twitter, Kanye address Spears: “Yo Britney, I’m really happy for you and I’mma let you be #1, but me and Jay-Z single is one of the best songs of all time! LOL”

West is referring to the fact that Hold It Against Me has edged out his own H • A • M on the iTunes overall singles chart (Spears is also #1 in pop singles while Kanye is #1 on the Hip Hop / Rap chart). Kayne’s “best of all time” quip is of course in reference to the instance in which he once crashed the MTV VMA stage during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech in order to declare that Beyonce had the greatest video of all time. Here’s more on Kanye West. Here’s more on Britney Spears.

Elton John did NOT have a heart attack, he’s fine

Elton John is just fine, despite a false story floating around that the music legend had a massive heart attack. The culprit: Twitter. In an ill-fated attempt at a dig at the notion of a certain young singer on television regarded as being a “young Elton John,” one tweeter remarked that Elton John had suffered a “massive heart attack” In an apparent attempt at a satirical take along the lines of “spinning in his grave” but instead stated it in such a manner that it was widely taken as fact – and retweeted by so many users that it became a front-page tweet. The individual then expressed his regret at the unfortunate joke.

Just to be clear: Elton John did NOT have a heart attack, and he’s probably unaware that the false story is spreading. 

Trey Songz blames his iPhone for typo, creates Twitter sensation

For all of the iPhone’s innovative features, including its auto-correction which cleans up most typos made via its virtual keyboard, occasionally it all just goes wrong. Just ask singer-actor Trey Songz, who attempted to pose an innocent question on his Twitter account while using his iPhone. After an unfortunate bit of auto-correction, the posted question ended up reading “Why up World?”

A bit later, Songz realized his unintentional typo, and shot back “Fckin iPhone” which set off a flurry of Twitter retweets to the point that “Fckin iPhone” has been a Twitter trending topic for the past hour. Interestingly, if Trey had spelled it out, Twitter’s trending topic censors would have disallowed it from becoming a trending topic (as we clearly saw last year when Jenny Slate dropped the F-bomb on Saturday Night Live). Then again, it’s not entirely clear whether Trey Songz really meant to type “Fckin iPhone” as a euphemism or if that too was just another typo.

LeBron James says his Dallas Cowboys are worst team in football

LeBron James has seen enough. Perhaps the most famous Dallas Cowboys fan in the world, the newest member of the Miami Heat threw up his hands digitally about twenty minutes ago via his Twitter account and declared the Cowboys to be the worst team in football – and while not calling out embattled Dallas Coach Wade Phillips by name, called for a change within the organization. As reminder that the stars of one sport are often simply fans of another sport, with the same excitement and at times frustration of any other fan, LeBron James lit into the Cowboys situations thusly:

“Something has to change around Cowboy land. Some furniture moving asap. This is just ridiculous man!!!!!! C’Mon Son”

Later, he went further in lamenting that while his Cowboys don’t have the worst record in football, he doesn’t see much merit in the team’s lone win:

“Never thought I’d say this about my Cowboys but they are officially the worst team in the NFL right now even though the Bills are winless!”

LeBron is in the midst of attempting to put out the flames of his own mid-career team change, which many felt was mishandled as he left the Cleveland Cavaliers in favor of super-teaming it with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami. But even as LeBron has begun to rack up wins and points in Miami in the name of getting back to business as usual, it’s clear that he’s lost patience with his favorite football team just as throughly as any other Cowboys fan.

Meanwhile, FOX’s Jay Glazer has predicted that assistant Jason Garrett will be the new Cowboys head coach before the night is over. No word from LeBron on whether he approves of such a move.

Lil Wayne placed on waivers by the New York Rikers, now a free man

Randy Moss is no longer a Viking (again), Shawne Merriman is no longer a Charger, and Lil Wayne is about to be no longer a resident of Rikers Island. The New York prison, made famous for its frequent references in Law & Order, has been best known this year as the prison in which the superstar rapper had been incarcerated. The news brings a touch of sobriety to a week in which star athletes who’d been fired by their teams were said to have their worlds crumbling around them, as the focus now shifts to a star musician who hasn’t tasted a breath of free air in about nine months. That hasn’t stopped Wayne from releasing his new album I Am Not A Human Being during that time, went to number one on the charts despite the rapper’s obvious inability to make publicity appearances during that time.

Scattered reports from Twitter have confirmed that crowds are forming in the visitor parking lot at Rikers Island as we speak, awaiting Lil Wayne’s release. According to the individual who has been curating Lil Wayne’s official Twitter account, Lil Wayne is “taking back this account as soon as he’s home.”

UPDATE: Whoops, not so fast. Try again tomorrow.

Sara Bareilles gets shrimp marinara named after her

Sara Bareilles was recently presented with the option of ordering a dish which had been named after her, thanks to a restaurant she encountered in her travels during her current tour. The restaurant’s specials board listed the “Sara Bareilles Shrimp Marinara” which had presumably done in honor of her arrival in town, along with various soups. Of the occurrence, Bareilles tweeted “Thank you to the sweet lil spot next to the venue who named dinner after me. Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Sara Bareilles is currently on tour in support of her new album Kaleidoscope Heart, which debuted last month at number one on the Billboard and iTunes charts, and includes the hit single King of Anything. Her past hits include Love Song and live favorite Gravity. Sara recently spoke with Beatweek about her new album and more.

Detroit Lions Zack Follett tweets “I’m OK” after scary injury

Detroit Lions linebacker Zack Follett, who was carted off the field today after an injury which appeared to have possibly left him paralyzed, has announced that he’s “ok” via Twitter. The Lions LB, who goes by Zakarian Follett on Twitter, posted the following after the game:

“Heaven was bombarded with prayer request and they were heard! Thank you and much love to all you showing your support. I’m ok. Thank God”

The seventh round draft pick is in his second year with the Lions after playing college ball at the University of California.

Lady GaGa disappears for nearly two weeks

Lady GaGa finally surfaced today after disappearing from Twitter for nearly two weeks. There’s more likely time for a musician to go quiet than when new material is actively being worked on, which GaGa affirmed today when she returned to Twitter and told fans that she’d been “working so hard” for them on her new music, along with a linked photo of her sitting at a piano in a studio. GaGa released her debut album The Fame about two years ago, and then followed it up with The Fame Monster, a nearly full-length companion piece, about a year ago. GaGa has said that she won’t be releasing new material in 2010, but she’s clearly working on it.

Lady GaGa is the world’s most popular Twitter user, now approaching seven million followers. She doesn’t necessarily tweet every day, but disappearing from the social network for a full twelve days is a stretch by her standards. Of her still-in-progress album-to-be, GaGa, simply told fans that she “can’t wait for u to hear the new music.”

Chilean miners and Rev Run both failed by Twitter tonight

With much of the world tuned in to watch the rescue of the trapped Chilean miners this evening, Twitter was abuzz with the topic as users shared their thoughts on the matter. However, nowhere in Twitter’s “trending topics” list was there any mention of the event, despite the fact that it was clearly the most-discussed topic of the evening. This appears to be a result of changes made to the trending topics algorithm earlier this year, aimed at keeping the same topics from trending day after day without any real news attached to them, simply because fans have conspired to push such topics into the trending list (some have called this the Justin Bieber rule). With the saga of the miners having lasted more than three months, it’s likely that every permutation of “Chilean miners” and “trapped miners” and “miners trapped” and so on has already been a trending topic at one point or another, so presumably all the mentions of the subject this evening were ignored by the trending algorithm because it mistakenly viewed them as the same old story.

This phenomenon is no more evident than when celebrities such as Brett Favre, Dave Matthews, and Michael Vick have shown up in the trending topics of late – but have each had their names misspelled on the list. Presumably, the trending algorithm ignored mentions of “Brett Favre” but mistakenly thought that the misspelled “Brett Farve” was breaking news, and allowed it on the list. The same went for “Dave Mathews” and “Micheal Vick” among other almost-comical misspellings.

But the most egregious trending topic snafu of the evening wasn’t what was omitted from the list – it was when Twitter appeared to announce that Rev Run, the Run DMC co-founder turned reverend, had been murdered. The phrase “Rev Run killed” sent shockwaves through the Twitter community when it appeared in the trending topics list. As it turned out, the phrase was in reference to the fact that Rev Run had “killed” in a television performance. In context, the phrase makes sense. Yanked out of context, it sounded like another Run DMC member had been gunned down, years after the death of Jam Master Jay.

If there’s an argument to be made for Twitter assigning someone to curate its trending topics list, at least in the most egregious instances, “Rev Run killed” has to be it. We’ve learned over the years that the list is in fact censored to exclude certain swear words (Jenny Slate’s F-bomb on SNL proved that a year ago). So if Twitter is willing to go as far as to ensure that the trending topics are family-friendly, why not also make sure that the trending topics aren’t falsely informing the world that someone has been killed? Perhaps it’s something for the folks at Twitter to consider.

Top five candidates for the new Twitter CEO position

Twitter CEO Evan Williams unexpectedly stepped aside today, handing the role to someone else within the company. If that means that a search for a new CEO outside the company is underway, here are a list of possibilities:

Mark Zuckerberg: Come on, how cool would that be? Well, not really, as Facebook’s continual privacy violations would likely find their way over to Twitter. Then again, Twitter doesn’t really involve any private user data anyway. Plus, this would be the best chance Twitter has of getting a movie made about it.

Loren Brichter: The dude did a nice job when he was running the Tweetie iPhone app all by himself. His app had fewer problems and downtime than Twitter itself typically has. Just sayin’

Steve Jobs: Sure, the guy already has a gig. But it wouldn’t be the first time Jobs was the CEO of two companies at once, as he headed Apple and Pixar simultaneously for years. If nothing else, Twitter’s fail whale would be redesigned in style.

Bill Parcells: He just resigned his position as Miami Dolphins executive, he gets bored easily, and he’s probably looking for another gig.

Fail Whale: Yes, the actual fail whale. It’s by far the most popular and recognizable figure in Twitter history. In fact, it even made an appearance today, as if to announce its candidacy for the position.

Britney Spears back in the headlines for the right, Glee-ful reasons

It’s nice to see Britney Spears making headlines for the right reasons. As she prepares to take over Glee tonight in her much-anticipated guest appearance on the show, the pop superstar is finally seeing her name being spoken frantically for something that actually has to do with her talents, rather than sideshow stuff.

Earlier this year, Britney (briefly) became the most-follower Twitter user when she rested the title away from Ashton Kutcher, but it quickly became apparent that the milestone had more to do with her fans than anything Spears was doing right herself, as she failed to even acknowledge the milestone on her Twitter account, which sees as many (clearly identified) tweets from her manager as it does from Britney herself. And almost as soon as she took the Twitter crown, she lost it to Lady GaGa.

Back up further, and Britney’s previous headlines have been centered around the time she shaved her head, the time she tried to launch a comeback at an awards show but wasn’t up to snuff, questions about her parenting skills, her divorce, and so on. In fact one has to peer so far back into her history to find a time when she was making headlines for talent-related reasons, it’s remarkable that she still has the staying power that she does. But don’t tell that to the Glee folks, who are undoubtedly even more gleeful than usual over the fact that Britney has graced them with her presence.

A one-off appearance (or will there be an encore?) on a TV series is a nice start, but if Britney Spears really wants to get her name back into the headlines in an even bigger, more meaningful manner, she’ll go ahead and release a full album of new music. If her appearance on Glee is enough to get her name atop Twitter’s trending topics list (and it is), then just imagine what kind of a spectacle it’ll be if and when she finally does release a new album.

The new Twitter.com makes me happy and sad. Where’s my desktop app?

Twitter has previewed a new Twitter.com interface, which is good news for me because it’s still how I use Twitter when on my Mac. And yes, I’m embarrassed to admit that. Having long ago shifted over to a real app on my iPhone (after trying a bunch I settled on Tweetie, and so did the folks at Twitter), I’ve never found a third party desktop Twitter app that I considered usable. I know a lot of folks love TweetDeck, but it’s so busy it makes me feel like my house is on fire. And while Tweetie for Mac shows potential, that’s all it’s ever showed, as there’s just too much about it that doesn’t work for me. So here I am, one of the biggest proponents of shifting everything beyond basic reading out of the pitifully-outdated concept known as the web browser and into real desktop apps, both on my Mac and, if you want, on your PC (but that’s another conversation). In fact pretty much all I do through a web browser these days is read articles, as everything from email to chatting to music shopping are conducted in nicely done desktop apps. With the exception, of course, of Twitter and Facebook. And so today’s revamped new Twitter.com makes me both happy and sad.

The demo looks promising, but that’s a relative term. The new overhaul appears to do or Twitter.com what Gmail did for webmail, which is to take a concept that should have never, ever been attempted in something as lame as a web browser, and has always been a needlessly crappy experience because it’s bound in a web browser, and basically make it less crappy – but still very much on the crappy side. I say “appears” because hey, I’ve got to be fair and use it before passing any real judgment. But the idea that the good folks at Twitter have somehow managed to be the first entity in history to pull off a not-crappy experience within a web browser is, well, skepticism-inducing at best.

But still, less crappy is a good thing, and so I’m happy about the new Twitter.com. Here’s why I’m every bit as sad, though: the folks at Twitter finally figured out this year that apps are the only proper way to use Twitter, at least on the mobile side. There’s now an official free Twitter app for iPhone, iPad, and every other major smartphone out there. That’s the good news. The bad news is that that particular revelation hasn’t yet sunk in on the desktop side, as Twitter is still clearly investing a lot of resources into revamping its Mac and PC web browser interface when in my opinion those resources should have instead been almost wholly dumped into producing real desktop Twitter apps for Mac and PC.

Maybe that’s coming and we just don’t know it. After all, the future of Tweetie for Mac in the wake of Twitter’s acquisition of Tweetie for iPhone (and its sole developer) is still not entirely publicly clear. And I know that Twitter will probably say they’re focusing their resources on the web browser interface because it’s what most people use to access Twitter on their computers anyway. And that’s true. But imagine if, back in the 1980′s, Apple had said it was going to continue to put most of its resources into the Apple II because that’s what most Apple customers were using, even though the new concept called the Macintosh had just rolled out and was clearly the future. Wait, actually, come to think of it, that’s exactly what Apple did when it fired Steve Jobs in 1985 and continued to push the Apple II on the public for several more years while treating the Mac like a niche. And as a result, Apple lost the desktop wars by focusing on yesterday’s technology, simply because it’s what most of its customers were using at the time.

Sound familiar?

If it’s any consolation to the folks at Twitter, the much-better-funded Facebook is making the exact same mistake. Oddly enough, the only one who’s getting it right is Apple with Ping, by building it into the iTunes desktop app for Mac and PC rather than having launched it as yet another sadly outdated browser-based social network. True, most folks are conditioned by now to do things through a web browser when they’re told to, no matter how crappy it is. But then again, iTunes has a good ten times the marketshare as AmazonMP3, despite the latter’s generally lower prices, with the only real difference being that iTunes is offered through a real app and AmazonMP3 is crippled by the confines of a web browser, thus offering a user experience that no one but a geek could love.

So I’m glad there’s a new and improved Twitter.com, as it’s what I’m still (humiliatingly, regretfully) using for all of my Twitter activities on my Mac, even here in 2010. But the way things are going, “Where’s my official desktop Twitter app?” is about to become the next future-woe refrain along the lines of “I was told there’d be flying cars.”

Sara Bareilles interview

“I don’t have any trouble being very honest with my lyrics,” she says of the fact that her new single King of Anything is an even more blatant kiss-off than her last hit song. But the phenomenal success of Love Song three years ago, rather than setting her free, left Sara Bareilles stuck under a self-imposed ceiling of expectations and unable to write any material she cared for. And it wasn’t until she decided to turn her frustrations into lyrics that the floodgates opened in the form of a song called Uncharted, which ultimately turned out to be the centerpiece of her new album Kaleidoscope Heart. “It helped me get over my writer’s block,” she says of Uncharted, “and it was a nice moment of connection with my producer of the first record, Eric Rosse. He and I sat and had a chat about how overwhelmed I was and stressed out about trying to produce material for the next record, and he basically was like, “You know, it sounds like that’s your song right there.” And so at his encouragement I sat down and really, for the first time in a long time, had written a song that really meant something to me.”

That the central component of an artist’s second record was written as a reaction to the success of the first record might seem cliche in a different context, but in this case it was more about addressing the issue for the sake of letting it go. “I’m so happy that I had the success that I did with Love Song, but it does mean that everything that I do from now on is gonna be measured up to the success of that song. So that was something I really had to say, and then kind of let go of to a certain extent and really divorce myself from owning that expectation and letting myself release it into the universe and move forward.”

Uncharted even goes so far as to very pleasantly drop a seemingly anti-inspirational message on listeners near the end in the form of “Compare where you are to where you want to be and you’ll get nowhere.” But even that, Sara says, is all about detaching the artistry from the expectations.

“I think it’s the idea that you end up being crippled by being so attached to the outcome. I think that’s one of the many lessons I’ve learned in my experience is that the more I’m attached to what the outcome looks like exactly, the less likely I am to actually end up there.”

But even with the role Uncharted played in bringing the rest of the album to life, it was the sonically peppy song King of Anything that Sara knew she wanted as her lead single as soon as she’d finished writing it. As upbeat as the song is, the message is nothing short of devastating, as she spends three and a half minutes telling a know it all to back off. As it turns out, her honesty as a songwriter extends to being perfectly willing to reveal what her songs are about. Whereas she famously admitted that Love Song was written as a way of telling her label that she wasn’t interested in writing a love song for her first record, King of Anything was once again aimed at her own inner circle.

“It was actually kind of ironic, because it came about in a very manner as Love Song did,” Sara says of King of Anything. “It was at a point where I felt like I had sort of finished the record from a writing standpoint, and I was just sharing the music for the first time with people that are in my inner circle, so it’s management and a couple of people from the label and bandmates. And I didn’t realize how defensive I would be about their feedback. It was totally what I was asking for, that’s the purpose of playing new music for people, is to get some sense of how does someone else hear this song? But I got really protective and really defensive, and I I remember having this moment of clarity of saying to myself, and so it begins again.”

So why the emphasis on making it the first single? “I felt like that was my message to myself and to the world right now. Not everyone’s gonna like this record, there’s gonna be people that think that I’ve gone in a direction that they don’t support or whatever, but ultimately I have to know that I love it.”

The success of King of Anything on the heels of Love Song, then, begs the question of just how it is that Sara Bareilles get away with continuing to score radio hits by smiling away while dropping lyrical bombs. “I think the trick is, if you can sort of play musically and make it sound happy, or make it sound light and bright, and kind of juxtapose the depth or the darkness of the message with something that is fun to listen to. For some reason, that kind of combination is really appealing to me. It’s funny, it honestly makes me laugh to sort of tell someone to kiss off while you’re dancing around.”

But even if her fans are prepared by now for the stern messages wrapped in pretty packaging, they might still be spooked by the appearance of another person’s on the album in a song called, appropriately enough, Not Alone.

“He’s a character out of one of his own films,” she says of the fact that none other than the late Alfred Hitchcock makes a brief cameo in the song, in the form of a quote from an interview. So how did she end up deciding to use Hitchcock’s voice of all things? “We were playing with the idea of adding a musical interlude to that song because it just sort of felt like it needed something to smooth out the transition in the middle section of the song. And so I kind of wrote this very flowery piano part, and then my producer Neal [Avron] got excited about writing a little string arrangement, a kind of 1930′s sounding, old movie string arrangement. And then so we added that part to the song, and we always felt like it was just the perfect bedrock or foundation for something else. And I thought it would be amazing to get a quote from an old movie, and so I started looking online. When I think about some of my old movies, they’re Hitchcock films. I was looking at films like The Birds, but it never felt like I found a quote that made sense. And then I started looking at interviews of Hitchcock himself, and that totally spoke to me.”

Those fans who most endeared to the earnest ballads of her first record are in luck again this time around, with songs like Hold My Heart, which “will be a single” at some point. And the theme of letting go permeates through other songs, including the hopeful Let The Rain.

“That song to me is very much about rebirth and trying to find solace in letting go. I think a big theme for me this record was all about facing challenge head on, facing fear, facing anxiety, facing your own strengths. It was all about kind of embracing what was going on on the inside. To me, the actual physical sense of being baptized is a very unique and purposeful metaphor.”

She doesn’t get a lot of credit for it, but Sara Bareilles was one of the earliest major label musicians to find her way onto Twitter, back in the middle of 2007 when most people hadn’t even yet heard of it. But, continuing with the honesty theme, when her former marketing manager at Epic Records first mentioned the emerging social network to her, “I thought it was the dumbest idea of all time. I agreed and started an account, but I was like ‘This is the most pointless thing I’ve ever even heard of.’”

But although Twitter back in 2007 still consisted largely of everyone “talking about how they eat toast in the morning,” she stuck with it over the years and has been rewarded with followers in the millions. “I’ve actually really embraced it. I like it a lot actually now. I think partially because there’s no filter. It is the direct connection between the artist and the fan. And I think that’s why fans love it so much too. There’s no middleman.”

So now that Sara’s first two major hit songs have both been of the pleasantly devastating variety, does she feel any need to go in a different direction for her next single? “It’s not something I really consider. The choices that I make when I’m writing are always to make sure that the song is coming from an authentic place. And so if there seems to be a pattern with that, it’s probably because I was going through something over and over again and had to get it out in an artistic way. So I don’t worry too much about having the same message come out.”

And as far as how those only judging her from her radio hits might perceive her as a person, “as long as the message is true and authentic to the author, I guess it’s just out of your hands at that point.”

interview by Bill Palmer

Learn more at SaraBareilles.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook

app review: Twitter for iPad

Twitter for iPad recently launched! The official Twitter app was updated to be a universal app, working both on the iPhone and iPad. At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much bells and whistles, but once you figure out all the little hidden secrets, you’ll definitely love the new user interface.

When you first launch the app, you have a left panel with links to your Timeline, Mentions, Lists, Messages, Profile and Search. On the right side is your timeline of tweets. If you’re holding the iPad in landscape mode, the tweets only take up the center area of the screen. You might think that it’s wasting a lot of space the first time you see it. But try tapping on a tweet. The tweet will expand and create a new panel to the right of the timeline. The edge this app has over other iPad Twitter apps is the built-in browser that will display webpages, videos, and photos linked in tweets without closing the app. Having content display in-lined makes the Twitter user experience flow much more seamlessly. If you tapped a tweet that was part of a conversation, the tweets will also be grouped together in a new panel. This makes keeping up with conversations much easier!

As you click on tweets, new panels will appear to the right. You can swipe to slide through the panels to bring up more content. I find this to be an ingenious way to use the space of the iPad. A lot of content is displayed at one time and getting to specific data is as easy as a tap away.

Tips for getting the most out of the Twitter app:

Pinch a tweet and it’ll expand. I find it much easier to use two fingers (one on each hand) and drag out (mimicking a pinch movement). Some of the tweets are one-liners, so the tabs are pretty narrow. If you find a long tweet, it’s much easier to pinch.

Another tip is to use two fingers and drag down on a tweet. This displays the conversation (@replies) in a panel below. I thought this was a very clever way to display tweets. Be sure to keep both fingers on the tweet though. Once you let go, it’ll quickly roll-up like window shades!

If you have an iPhone, you may be interested in our walk-though of Twitter for the iPhone.

Download the Twitter iPhone/iPad app for free now.

More Screenshots

Viewing @replies and a follower’s profile.

The interface for replying and sending a tweet.

Ping, new Apple social network in iTunes 10: it’s not Facebook or Twitter

Apple has introduced its own social network named Ping. (No, not Bing). The network is built into the new iTunes 10 software, which is aimed at encouraging socialization of music and content. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has made it clear that Ping is neither Twitter nor Facebook, however his demonstration of a Lady GaGa-themed page shows that Ping does integrate Twitter. Jobs referred to Ping as being for “social music discovery” – with the ability to follow artists and friends. “You can get as private or as public as you want,” Jobs says of building your own Ping social network. Jobs is also apparently a fan of Paramore.

A half-dressed Lady GaGa appeared via pre-recorded video from the studio to talk about Ping.

Jobs also announced that iTunes digital music sales will surpass total sales of CDs in the United States in 2011.

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