Digital Media

LOS ANGELES--There are a lot of reasons why the entertainment industry is still trying to figure out how to wrangle Twitter: real-time tabloid drama, on-set spoilers, and the fact that 140 characters offers a lot of ways to say a movie really sucks.

The 140Conf LA event, which took place on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Kodak Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, had a great opportunity to be the definitive discussion hub for tackling those tricky issues and complications that arise when the much-talked-about "real-time Web" collides with the old-school entertainment industry. That didn't happen. Instead, the event was a general showcase of the possibilities of Twitter, much like at the previous 140Conf event in New York this summer.

Conference organizer Jeff Pulver said that despite the Hollywood setting, he didn't want to take a purely entertainment-focused angle. "This really is not a Twitter conference, it's a gathering of people who use it as a platform and speak it as a language," he explained at a post-conference cocktail event on Tuesday. Pulver said he intended 140Conf LA to be "a celebration" of the possibilities of Twitter and the people who are passionate about using it, a disparate crowd that includes marketers, public servants, and yes, entertainment industry professionals. Indeed, 140Conf featured panels about police chiefs who use Twitter, teachers implementing it in the classroom, and how it's affecting the photography profession.

True, there were a lot of entertainment types there, mostly those talking about how Twitter has positively affected their business. Industry bloggers talked about how the blast-it-out nature of Twitter makes it easier to harness and report fast-breaking news. "Access Hollywood" personality Billy Bush talked about what he's learned from Twitter, like "no TUIs. Twittering under the influence is not a good idea." And "Tonight Show" blogger Aaron Bleyaert talked about the program's popular "Celebrity Twitter Tracker" feature, in which it makes fun of banal celebrity tweets. "Making fun of how celebrities think that everything they do (matters)," Bleyaert said, "Twitter's been great for us."

More interestingly, Sarah Ross, head of digital at the Ashton Kutcher-founded Katalyst Media, said paparazzi interest in the Twitter-happy Kutcher has actually declined since he started documenting his life on the microblogging service. That's fascinating, and it would've been cool to see whether the case is the same or different for other celebrities who tweet. It would've been great to hear from an industry personality who doesn't tweet, or one who's quit the service, or some perspectives from the production or public relations side of things, or perhaps someone who manages celebrity Twitter accounts. There's a lot out there.

But, Jeff Pulver said, he didn't think a Twitter-and-Hollywood conference would have much draw.

"I don't think anyone in L.A. would give a damn if we had a conference about the entertainment industry and Twitter," Pulver said. "It's not as interesting to people here as it is elsewhere."

Another conference attendee at the same cocktail party voiced a similar opinion. "This is not a studio crowd," he said of the people who'd showed up for 140Conf. Studio executives are "not innovators, not movers. They're very reactive."

Fair enough. Folks like Pulver, who have been using Twitter since its early days, are probably pretty sick of hearing about the latest gossip-blog diatribes getting plastered all over their conversation tool of choice. But headlines in the likes of Variety, The Los Angeles Times, and the Hollywood Reporter beg to differ. "Bones" creator Hart Hanson inadvertently created a mini-firestorm when a tweeted joke about swine flu on-set was taken seriously. Some studios have reportedly started inserting "no tweeting" clauses into contracts. As the likes of Perez Hilton and TMZ continually remind us, it's also given train-wreck pop stars a whole new outlet to hate on one another.

The entertainment industry has historically been reliant on the deft spin of public relations to keep a gaggle of wild personalities under wraps. Social media, not surprisingly, is a real problem. That goes double for Twitter, which can be updated on-the-fly from any mobile phone on the set of the latest hyped-up teen vampire flick or on the sidelines of a velvet-rope tiff at the Roosevelt Hotel. 140conf, rather than focusing on the glittering possibilities, could have given these very real issues some more face time.

Take the no-tweeting rules that are getting imposed by studios, production companies, publicists, and even sports leagues. "The majority of celebrity tweets are inane and not of concern to studios, but they still need the stronger contractual protections to cover themselves against the minority," entertainment attorney Jonathan Fuhrman, who previously served as vice president of business and legal affairs at The Weinstein Company, explained to CNET News.

"Every talent agreement--with writers, directors, producers, cast, and crew--has a standard confidentiality provision," Fuhrman continued. "That's what really is at issue here. In a world where anyone can tweet, the new, buffed-up confidentiality language is an important protection for the studio to prevent any of the talent from releasing this. And this is before you take into account the whole other issue about publicists and marketing campaigns: we are talking huge, million-dollar organized campaigns that can be compromised by an ill-advised tweet."

But on the flip side, that potential benefit of Twitter was paraded onstage at 140Conf. "Heroes" creator Tim Kring, for example, gave a well-attended talk on Tuesday about how Twitter has allowed the NBC sci-fi show's team to interact with fans in an unprecedented way. "You can follow the escapades of the show by following the people involved in it," he said.

Still, Kring also hinted at the complications of using Twitter as a vehicle for connecting with TV audiences: "We're now making Episode 13 and we are airing Episode 8, so at the beginning of the season we're up to two or three months ahead of where the audience is," Kring said. "The making of the show is so far ahead of where the audience experience is that it's hard to have a real-time relationship." Unfortunately, he didn't elaborate on how the show keeps tabs on its Twittering team. Have they ever had any accidental leaks or near-missteps? Kring didn't talk about that.

"Twitter has become hugely important in marketing movies," Fuhrman said. "The perfect example is 'Paranormal Activity.' What Twitter did for that movie, every studio would love to bottle that formula, and believe me, they'll try." In other words, it's a delicate balance. Twitter, for all its 140-character simplicity, has the potential to make or break a big Hollywood success.

Even though he didn't think it merited its own two-day event on the Kodak Theatre stage, 140Conf creator Jeff Pulver did acknowledge that he thinks the Hollywood-Twitter relationship is only going to get more complicated, especially when it comes to the big movie studios.

"They're scared because they want to be the gatekeeper," Pulver said. "It's a big conflict and it's going to get worse."

This post was updated at 11:33 a.m. PT on October 30 to correct the spelling of Jonathan Fuhrman's name.

A boat rows on the Charles River in Boston in the fall of 2006.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET)

Now, these are some guys you don't see at the average Silicon Valley hackathon: The Harvard heavyweight crew team is filming scenes for "The Social Network," according to a Boston Globe gossip column on Tuesday. Film crews have been on the Charles River in Boston recently, the column reports.

That's because two of the main characters in the juicy, David Fincher-directed tell-all about the origins of Facebook are Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, would-be social-network entrepreneurs who claimed that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole the code and business plan for their project, ConnectU. The identical twin Winklevosses were also members of Harvard's crew team, they and ultimately wound up on the U.S. Olympic squad last summer in Beijing.

The Globe column also notes that one of the rowers had some red dots painted on his face so that ultimately, the face of an actor could be superimposed on it--which, though it sounds technologically complicated, is probably easier than trying to teach an actor how to row. Besides, "The Social Network" already has some smoke and mirrors to deal with: the Winklevoss twins are being played by a single actor, Armie Hammer.

(The Globe assumes that the face to be superimposed is that of pop star Justin Timberlake, who plays Napster co-founder Sean Parker in "The Social Network." But Parker, we're pretty sure, never rowed on Harvard's heavyweight crew team.)

Meanwhile, though the Charles River is apparently fair game, it looks like Harvard didn't let the film crew on campus: Johns Hopkins University in Maryland put out a release on Tuesday saying it will be standing in for Harvard, in some scenes shot in early November.

In preparation for its upcoming spin-off from parent company Time Warner, AOL has named nine members to its board of directors--and from what it sounds like, more additions to the board could be coming.

The current lineup includes former Amazon Chief Information Officer Richard Dalzell, Plainfield Asset Management partner Karen Dykstra, financial services exec William Hambrecht, Paley Center for Media Director Patricia Mitchell, former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, former CBS Chief Financial Officer Fredric Reynolds, former Procter & Gamble exec James Stengel, and ex-William Morris Agency CEO James Wiatt.

"AOL is very fortunate to have an exceptional group of proven leaders to serve on our board of directors," CEO Tim Armstrong, who took over the reins of the company this spring, said in a release. "AOL is on a mission to help create the future of media and content and the AOL board will play a central part in helping us focus the strategy and also operate the company with the highest ethical standards."

The majority of the board members don't hail from Armstrong's own Silicon Valley turf: the CEO served as Google's director of sales up until his hire at AOL. But most of them are veterans of traditional media, which presumably will give the onetime dial-up king an advantage as it attempts to shape itself into a digital-content power player--at least on the surface.

(Disclosure: One of AOL's new board members has a past affiliation with CBS Corp., which publishes CNET News.)

Actor Armie Hammer (left, with actress Blake Lively) in a promo shot from TV series 'Gossip Girl.' Hammer will play twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss in 'The Social Network.'

(Credit: The CW)

Did director David Fincher end up finding a pair of 6-foot-5-inch identical twins to play ConnectU founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss in "The Social Network," his upcoming movie about the contested origins of Facebook? It appears the answer is no.

According to blog The Playlist, which picked up on filmmaker Richard Kelly's Twitter account, a single actor has been cast: 23-year-old Armie Hammer, best known for the role of moneyed sleazebag Gabriel on teen drama "Gossip Girl." A thread on screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's Facebook page reveals that additional young actors cast include Max Minghella, Rooney Mara, Dakota Johnson, Brenda Song, and Josh Pence--but no character names were provided.

"The Social Network," which kicked off filming in Boston this week, is an adaptation of Ben Mezrich's unauthorized Facebook tell-all, "The Accidental Billionaires." Founder Mark Zuckerberg will be played by actor Jesse Eisenberg, while pop star Justin Timberlake will play Valley it-boy Sean Parker.

The question remains as to whether Armie Hammer, who actually is 6-foot-5, will be playing both twins with the help of some "Parent Trap"-style camera work, or if they've combined Cameron and Tyler, who had a longstanding legal battle with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg after they accused him of stealing their code and business plan, into a single character.

In either case, he sounds like the perfect casting choice for the white-collar Harvard graduates, who hail from Greenwich, Conn., and competed in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing on the U.S. rowing team. According to the Internet Movie Database, Hammer "is the great-grandson of industrialist, art collector, and philanthropist Armand Hammer."

Dude won't even have to act!

Columbia Pictures' "The Social Network," the screen adaptation of Ben Mezrich's Facebook tell-all "The Accidental Billionaires," is likely to start filming in a matter of weeks. As you probably know already, "Fight Club" director David Fincher is at the helm, working with a screenplay by "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin.

And it looks like they're hoping to capture some of the fall foliage in the Northeast: Lead actor Jesse Eisenberg, who has been cast as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, told MTV News that the movie will be filming on location at Harvard's campus, where Facebook was founded early in 2004, for three weeks in October. The rest of the movie will reportedly be shot in Los Angeles.

That's interesting because Harvard is pretty strict about not letting film crews on campus, something that Mezrich pointed out to CNET News in an interview this summer. (Only one feature film in the past three decades, 2007's "The Great Debaters," has had scenes shot on Harvard's campus.) Even more interestingly, a Harvard representative declined to confirm Eisenberg's assertion, but did not deny it either.

Either way, doing just about anything in Boston in October runs the risk of colliding with the annual Head of the Charles Regatta, a two-day rowing race that brings in athletes from around the world and has been known to clog the streets of Cambridge with all the extra traffic. This year it's on October 17 and 18. Considering a big chunk of the script for "The Social Network" deals with twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Zuckerberg legal rivals turned Olympic rowers, overlapping with the race might have been intentional.

A representative from the Head of the Charles organizing committee said that while no one from a film crew has contacted them yet about filming at the event, it would be neither surprising nor unprecedented, as "we've been a backdrop for a lot of movies in the past."

On that note, we still haven't heard who the casting directors have (or haven't) found to play the 6-foot-5-inch identical twins.

Jesse Eisenberg, pictured here with 'Adventureland' co-star Kristen Stewart, will be playing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 'The Social Network.'

(Credit: Miramax Films)

"Adventureland" star Jesse Eisenberg will be playing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and singer Justin Timberlake will be playing Silicon Valley mainstay Sean Parker in "The Social Network," director David Fincher's cinematic adaptation of the company's early days.

(Well, it's the company's early days as depicted in Ben Mezrich's juicy and most-definitely-not-authorized "The Accidental Billionaires," which some have criticized for being factually liberal.)

The news was first reported by Variety, which added that actor Andrew Garfield will be playing Zuckerberg's Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. Garfield is perhaps best known for his role in the 2007 Robert Redford film "Lions for Lambs."

Production for Columbia Pictures' "The Social Network," which was written by "The West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin, is reportedly going to begin in October in Boston.

We heard a few months back that the producers were looking at some bigger names to play Zuckerberg: perpetually typecast nerd Michael Cera and "Transformers" star Shia LaBeouf. But it looks like they're putting the real star power instead into the casting of Timberlake as Sean Parker.

Eisenberg, who turns 26 in a few weeks, is a decently big name himself: he's also been seen in "The Squid and the Whale" and "The Village." Timberlake's musical reputation needs no introduction (he got his start, after all, in boy band 'N Sync), but his best-known acting role might be the "Saturday Night Live" short "D*** in a Box."

UPDATE at 11:11 a.m. PT: It looks like the casting rumors were first reported earlier this month by the blog Scriptshadow, albeit in a far less concrete context than Variety--and the report's coincidence with the Labor Day holiday weekend likely kept it under the radar.

Sony Music Entertainment's catalog is coming to indie music retail site Amie Street, in the New York-based start-up's first major label deal.

But here's the catch: Sony's catalog will not be participating in the "dynamic pricing" model that's been Amie Street's trademark--unpopular songs are the cheapest, and the price rises as a song is downloaded more. Instead, Sony songs will be available for a flat 69 cents, 99 cents, or $1.29 based on popularity.

"It wasn't a hard decision for us," Amie Street co-founder Josh Boltuch told CNET News. "This isn't affecting all the other dynamically priced music on the site." He noted that RED, the indie music distribution company owned by Sony, already offers its songs on Amie Street through the dynamic-pricing model. "Sony Music obviously has the option to experiment with dynamic pricing at their discretion," Boltuch added. "Clearly we would love to do that with them."

This isn't the first time that an indie music retailer has had to compromise to ink a major-label deal. Sony was also the first major label to bring its catalog--well, its "classic" back catalog--to subscription site eMusic. But the deal resulted in eMusic raising some of its prices in tandem.

Amie Street, which pitches itself as a way to discover as well as purchase new music, made major headlines last year when it was the only place on the Web to buy songs recorded by Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the call-girl-slash-aspiring-pop-star at the center of the Eliot Spitzer scandal.

The new Kazaa appears to be mostly a run-of-the-mill subscription music service, but it does add a few new twists. The one that stands out right from the sign-up phase is that subscribers can either pay by credit card or via their telephone company.

(Credit: Kazaa.com)

"Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. (BDE) and Kazaa are not affiliated with your local telephone company," Kazaa writes in the company's terms of service, "However, for your convenience, BDE's charges will appear on your local telephone bill."

Music industry insiders have long talked about creating subscription services in partnership with Internet service providers, who could tuck monthly charges into a phone bill. The thinking is that consumers would be less likely to feel the pinch of by monthly fees if they were mixed in with all the other fees found in typical phone bill.

These ISP-music stores have yet to emerge in any significant way, but Kazaa's subscription service, announced Monday, appears to borrow this idea in an attempt to make the $20 monthly charges a little more palatable.

One of the main problems I saw this weekend when I tried out Kazaa's new service was that in order to post the charges to my phone bill, the company asked me to submit my Social Security number. That is bound to spook plenty of people.

Ring-tone companies have charged customers this way for a while, but to the best of my knowledge, not another major music service offers a similar payment option.

After becoming one of the world's most popular file-sharing programs, Kazaa was nearly sued out of existence several years ago. The new iteration is much more legal, if not much more routine.

The songs are protected by digital rights management, which is the norm for most subscription services. The service supports PCs only, not Mac or Linux, which means it is not compatible with iPods. Of course, like most subscription services, when a person stops paying, they lose their songs.

Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Kazaa's parent company, appears to be betting that Kazaa's brand will give it an advantage in a U.S. market, which has seen a score of music subscription services come and go. None of them have found a significant audience.

Kazaa is coming back from the dead.

One of the most recognizable brands in the history of illegal downloading is due to officially resurface, perhaps as early as next week, sources close to the company told CNET News. Only this time the name Kazaa will be part of a legal music service.

Altnet and parent company Brilliant Digital Entertainment attached the Kazaa brand to a subscription service that will offer songs and ringtones from all four of the major recording companies. For the past few months, a beta version has been available.

The company tried recently to ratchet up expectations with a series of vague, and what some considered misguided, press releases.

The site will open with over 1 million tracks. According to the blog TorrentFreak, the new Kazaa will offer unlimited downloads for $20 a month.

Kazaa was developed by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis and rose to prominence following the first wave of peer-to-peer networks. The courts effectively shut the company down when it ordered it to prevent users from committing copyright violations.

Kazaa is joining the growing number of former rogue file-sharing applications and services whose names are now being used for legal operations.

First came Napster, and just this week a Swedish software company revealed that it planned to relaunch BitTorrent tracking site the Pirate Bay as a pay service.

What hasn't been proven yet is whether any of the once outlaw brands can be used to make money legally.