Webware

It is not easy to feed the egos of Hollywood celebrities. It is not even easy to merely feed their intestines.

This seems to be the conclusion one reaches from the story of Jon-Barrett Ingels, waiter to the stars. Well, now former waiter to the stars.

You see, Ingels was merely an extra in the vast set that is Beverly Hills. He would be still or sparkling, depending on his audience. And occasionally, he would turn his Twitter account into a diary of how hard it was to make his daily bread.

According to the delightful Los Angeles Times blog Brand X, Ingels worked at the Barney Greengrass establishment in Beverly Hills. I am not entirely familiar with it. However, a minuscule drift toward Citysearch reveals to me that within its exquisite walls, one can espy not only the Olsen twins, but also Pamela Anderson.

So it would not have fazed Ingels at all to greet Jane Adams, she of the HBO penis-inspired series "Hung" and formerly the terribly neurotic skinny thing who consorted with Niles on "Frasier." According to Ingels, Adams ordered a soup and a lemonade, and for this sustenance received an entirely reasonable check for $13.44.

Adams allegedly explained that she left her wallet in her car. Ingels said she could go out and get it, but he claims that she never returned that day.

Now, given that a large swath of Hollywood waiters are aspiring writers, actors, and gigolos, one should be unsurprised that Ingels subsequently blogged about this episode at HowToSucceedAsAFailure, which appears to be his magnum opus. Or perhaps magnum hopeless.

BJ Novak, who doesn't look hungover to me at all.

(Credit: CC Angela N/Flickr)

When a representative materialized the next day to pay for Adams' food, Ingels felt empowered to tweet at his Twitter account, PapaBarrett: "Tues: Jane Adams, star of HBO series "Hung," skipped out on a $13.44 check. Her agent called and payed the following day. NO TIP!!!"

Oh, Papa. Oh, Momma. Could he not hear the train coming even then? Well, no. When other celebrities were brought to his table, Barrett continued to tweet with an eagle's eye and a teenage boy's brain.

Ali Larter, the famous, um, person from "Heroes," was "not wearing a bra". BJ Novak, the louche and wayward intern from "The Office", was, perish the concept, "hungover."

As for Tori Spelling, she of the rather classic "Beverly Hills, 90210" and no obvious plastic surgery, well, Ingels described her as having "become hot." In the very same tweet, he offered indiscreetly that she eats "salami eggs and onions."

This was all within a few days in July. A month later, Ingels claims that Adams wandered into the restaurant, rather upset, and gave him his $3 tip. Ingels offered her platitudes of the "Aw, you didn't have to" sort. But Adams, he says, exclaimed, "Well, I read about it on Twitter!"

You know that the power of microblogging is such that this does not have a happy ending. Yes, Ingels was put out to green grass.

Of Adams, he muttered to Brand X, "All she could think about was herself and her pride and her ego."

I am not sure whether this was before he tweeted on August 15, "For the record, I think Jane Adams (Hung) is a great actress!!" and "Jane Adams (Hung), if you're listening, I am producing a Web series and would love you in it!!!"

So now PapaBarrett is unemployed but still tweeting. On September 10, he bemoaned that though the NFL has a Twitter policy, Barneys New York (visited by many a Greengrass patron) does not.

Jon-Barrett Ingels currently has 457 followers. He lists his occupation as "Unemployed, thanks to Twitter."

Ashton Kutcher at the Brainstorm conference earlier this year

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)

Everybody panic!

Seemingly unable to let any hot social media start-up escape his hunky clutches, it appears that actor and prolific Twitter oversharer Ashton Kutcher is now using where-you-at, ping-your-friends city guide app Foursquare. A tipster pointed me to a Foursquare account for user "aplusk," the same handle that Kutcher uses on Twitter for his 3 million-plus followers.

Is it real? Well, his friends include Digg founder (and occasional bromancer) Kevin Rose, videoblogging personality Justine Ezarik, and "mrskutcher," which is the Twitter username for his wife, actress Demi Moore. Since Foursquare requires mutual approval of friend connections, this would indicate that the likes of Rose and Moore believe the account to be legit. And since Kutcher's Twitter account is linked to the Foursquare profile, which requires using the Twitter log-in credentials, it's either legit or Kutcher's Twitter account has been hacked. (And there have been no indications as to the latter.)

So why is this important? Well, it could be pretty momentous for Foursquare if Ashton Kutcher sticks around.

All joking aside, the 31-year-old Kutcher has been a prominent, and admittedly important figure when it comes to bringing social-media tools into the mainstream. His race to beat CNN to 1 million Twitter followers (he won) was one of the publicity blitzes that put the name of the microblogging service on the pop-culture map. Foursquare, a tiny New York-based start-up that launched only six months ago out of the ashes of the ill-fated Dodgeball and still hasn't wrapped up a round of venture funding (though I hear they're working on it) could really get a boost from this--assuming their servers are ready for it.

But it also raises an important security question. Unless they're using Foursquare to broadcast their locations for promotional purposes (as some party photographers and DJs in NYC are already doing, and it'd be certainly interesting if Kutcher did something like this), celebrities using any kind of GPS-based or geolocation app could be making themselves vulnerable to varying degrees of annoyance ranging from pesky fans with cameras to full-on stalking. It could also make Foursquare an appealing target for hackers.

But I assume Kutcher, who seems like a pretty smart guy, will be careful with who he lets onto his friends list. Now for the real question: how long before he unlocks a "Crunked" badge?

UPDATE (1:06 p.m. PT): Just to clarify, a few people were under the impression Kutcher had already deleted his Foursquare account. That was actually due to a broken link in this blog post; Kutcher is, for the time being, still on Foursquare. (My bad.)

On a completely different note, I recommend reading this follow-up post on branding consultant Matt Spangler's blog about what Ashton Kutcher means for Foursquare.

Oprah Winfrey joined the Twitterverse on Friday morning.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Updated 11:33 a.m. PDT with new @Oprah follower statistics.

The official answer is in regarding Twitter Chief Executive Evan Williams' teasing tweet Thursday about Friday being a "very big day": @Oprah.

Oprah issued her first tweet around 7:10 a.m. PDT Friday--the same day Williams and Twitter's top celebrity, Ashton Kutcher, will join her on the show.

"HI TWITTERS . THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY," she said, in etiquette-trampling all-caps.

It's easy to roll your eyes at the Twitter hype. The 30-person company still doesn't have a business model. A Google advertising partnership or an acquisition would have been more exciting news for the tech crowd. But here's why the Oprah moment shouldn't be dismissed lightly.

Within about 15 minutes her first tweet, Oprah had more than 76,000 followers, with a hundred more arriving by the minute. Four hours later, she had more than 125,000.

She embodies an element of mainstream America and has sway over a vast audience. An Oprah endorsement makes it a lot easier for a start-up to legitimately argue it's broken out of its tech niche, or at least is breaking out of it.

Twitter will be the subject of discussion on the show, and Williams will be making an appearance, though wearing dirty socks, he said.

Vying with Oprah for Twitter celebrity du jour status is Ashton Kutcher, aka @aplusk, who on late Thursday became the first Twitter user to attract 1 million followers. He gave Oprah a hello tweet Friday morning, which given the breadth of his following, likely will accelerate the rate at which people sign up to follow TV's diva.

Celebrities are migrating to Twitter in astounding numbers. Or so we think.

I've set out to determine if the most-followed celebrities (according to WeFollow) on Twitter are really who they say they are. Is it someone pretending to be a celeb? Is it their publicist taking care of the "trivial" task of updating their Twitter profile? You might be surprised to know that most celebrities are really tweeting. And that's pretty cool.

The top 10

Britney Spears is tweeting sometimes.

(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)

1. Britney Spears Britney Spears is a celebrity of the first order. But if you read through her profile, you quickly realize that she's only tweeting a portion of the time. When she's not, other people in her entourage are. Britney signs all her tweets with "~Britney." Seems possible.

Verdict: @BritneySpears is the real Britney Spears.

2. Jimmy Fallon Jimmy Fallon tweets on the @JimmyFallon Twitter account. There's no doubt about it. He talks about things only Jimmy could shed light on. And most importantly, he talks about his tweeting on his show, "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon." No worries here: it's the real guy.

Verdict: @JimmyFallon is really JimmyFallon.

3. Shaquille O'Neal Dubbed @THE_REAL_SHAQ, Shaquille O'Neal's Twitter account is one of the most entertaining in this roundup. Shaq posts pictures of himself, sends brief messages out to followers, and unleashes one-liners that will make you chuckle. I don't think there's any debating that @THE_REAL_SHAQ is the real Shaq.

Verdict: @THE_REAL_SHAQ is really him.

4. Lance Armstrong Lance Armstrong is definitely tweeting on the @LanceArmstrong account. He tweets about his travel around the U.S. He talks about where he's riding today and most importantly, he uploads personal pictures to his TwitPic account.

Verdict: @LanceArmstrong is the real deal.

5. Ellen DeGeneres Ellen DeGeneres is tweeting on her show's Twitter profile, @TheEllenShow. On multiple occasions she has said on her show that she tweets and a recent update provided a TwitPic link to an image of her mother. She also tends to make references to events in her life that others might not know.

Verdict:@TheEllenShow is the real Ellen DeGeneres

(Credit: Columbia Pictures)

A Friday piece in The New York Times exposes what we all sort of knew already: some of those celebrity Twitter accounts are actually ghostwritten. Other ones are fake. That guy twittering as Christopher Walken is not actually Christopher Walken.

It's not terribly surprising. Nobody actually thought, for example, that the official Britney Spears Twitter account was actually written by the pop singer herself. But some others, like rapper 50 Cent's, come across as fairly authentic to the degree that some fans could be miffed to find that it's actually the head of his digital-media team doing the twittering. And it does seem a little bit unnerving that "ghost-Twittering" is now an actual job skill for some freelance writers.

See, here's where the dissonance lies. Twitter has become one of the hallmarks of the Web 2.0 "transparency" movement, recommended by new-media consultants left and right as a way for businesses and brands (not to mention celebrities) to put their real faces forward. It's been effective image repair for tarnished brands such as that of cable giant Comcast, which runs an account called "Comcast Cares" to conduct customer service; then there's former White House strategist Karl Rove, whose shadowy, man-behind-the-curtain persona from the Bush administration is a far cry from the Twitter account with which he converses with followers, hosts trivia contests, and debates which third-party Twitter apps are the most efficient.

If that's your opinion of what Twitter is or should be, ghostwriting just doesn't seem like it's playing by the rules.

Basketball player Shaquille O'Neal, whose @THE_REAL_SHAQ Twitter account has become one of the service's most popular, seemed to disapprove of Twitter accounts that aren't actually written by the people whose names they bear. "It's 140 characters. It's so few characters," he told the Times. "If you need a ghostwriter for that, I feel sorry for you."

John Mayer's deep thoughts on Twitter.

(Credit: Twitter)

So I once went on a movie date with a guy who thought it was sort of weird that I posted to Twitter about the movie in mid-date. In retrospect, it probably was weird, and a bit rude, and I wouldn't do it again (and no, there was no second date). But get a load of this one.

Sources quoted in Star magazine and rehashed by the U.K.'s Telegraph (we can tell this anonymous source is just rock solid) claim that the highly publicized relationship between pop singer John Mayer and actress Jennifer Aniston fizzled because of the evil forces of...Twitter!

"People claiming to be friends of (Aniston) have told Star magazine that she finished the affair after discovering Mayer, 31, spent hours on the networking website, despite telling her he was too busy to get in touch with her," the Telegraph report alleged.

Mayer has become an extremely avid user of the microblogging service (username is @johncmayer), along with fellow celebrities like basketball player Shaquille O'Neal, comedians Jimmy Fallon and John Hodgman, and actor Ashton Kutcher (who famously got his wife, actress Demi Moore, to join Twitter as well).

But now it looks like the celebrity Twitterers may be getting a glimpse of what many of us in the tech industry know already: Chronicling your life in constant 140-character updates doesn't leave much wiggle room once you've gotten used to always telling the world what you're doing. I'm sure more than a few people have gotten in trouble because they Twittered about watching sports at a bar when they'd informed their bosses that they were holed up in bed with the flu.

A concluding note to John Mayer: Look on the bright side. At least this time the tabloids aren't blaming a breakup on infidelity, drug addiction, or the failure to disclose a venereal disease. I know plenty of nice, smart girls who wouldn't mind a Twitter-addicted beau.

Most folks don't want to admit it, so I'll lead the charge: I can't get enough of celebrity gossip sites.

Each day, I'll surf to my favorites and find out everything I wanted to know about Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and other celebs. It's my guilty pleasure. And by the looks of things, especially if we are to believe a post written by Perez Hilton's founder, which claims his site had 13.9 million page views Monday, I'm not alone.

So let's take a look at some of the prominent celebrity gossip sites across the Web and find out why they're so intriguing.

Defamer
Although Defamer was originally a separate entity under the Gawker Media umbrella, the company's founder and CEO, Nick Denton, announced recently that the site would become a section on Gawker.com to streamline business operations. And although it's not the most popular of the celebrity gossip sites, it's still worth visiting.

The content on Defamer is interesting, but I've found that it tends to be a little late in its reporting, and it's not nearly as compelling as sites like TMZ or Perez Hilton. In fact, despite its name, Defamer is decidedly "nicer" than the competition, and its tries to be more news-oriented than some sites that simply post pictures and comment on the way a particular celebrity looks.

I don't mind that Defamer has chosen to go that way, but as a major Perez Hilton fan, I enjoy the occasional snark.

Perez Hilton
If you haven't been to Perez Hilton to find out all the juicy details on A-list celebs like Angelina Jolie or D-list celebs like LC (Lauren Conrad) from "The Hills," you probably haven't spent enough time on the Web. Believe it or not, this site is, in its own strange way, a Web institution.

Rather than posting videos, a la TMZ, Perez Hilton boasts some of the funniest and most eye-popping stories on celebrities anywhere on the Web. The site is filled with pictures Perez finds of celebrities living their daily lives, which are then edited to include mean-spirited or (at times) nice comments. That said, many of the edits made to the pictures by Perez are adult in nature, so it's best if you read this blog when the kids are asleep.

Perez Hilton has been around for years, and the site's founder, Mario Lavandeira Jr., is one of the most hated people in Hollywood. He doesn't mince any words, and his blog posts, while short, are biting and shoot straight from the hip.

Unlike sites like Defamer, Perez often breaks big stories and has shots of celebrities hours before other gossip sites. Because Perez Hilton is the biggest site in the space, Lavandeira has been cited in a slew of lawsuits, and some celebrities criticize him, saying he goes easy on some and unnecessarily hard on others. He claims that he's tough on everyone.

Regardless, Perez Hilton is a must-see for celebrity watchers. The blog posts are sometimes serious, often funny, and always entertaining.

Earlier this week, Gwyneth Paltrow's new start-up Goop.com went live. The site promises to have tips for food, shopping, and life in general from the actress.

There's no telling whether it's going to be more of a blog or an actual business venture with branded products, an editorial staff, and a synergistic TV program. What we do know is that Paltrow is simply the latest in a long string of celebrities who have come off the big screen (or out of the recording studio) and onto the Web with products and services backed with their money and persona.

Below are 14 recent ones, including updates on whether they're still around.

Celebrity: 50Cent
Site: ThisIs50.com
ThisIs50.com is a cross between an online resume and a place for fans to gather. What makes it an interesting business venture is that it's been created using the build-your-own social network service Ning. 50Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson has leveraged all sorts of brand integration like a Kyte.tv video player and links to various places to buy and stream his music, including imeem.

Status: Alive and kicking, although it's a visual mess. There's also a 50cent.com, which is far cleaner and powered by MTV-owned Flux.

Celebrity: Ashton Kutcher
Site: Blahgirls.com
Kutcher, who is also the founder of VoIP start-up Ooma, launched Blahgirls earlier this month at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco. While mainly playing an animated video series, it's also a celebrity gossip blog that plans to make money through advertising and branding that shows up inside the videos.

Status: It's too early to tell but celebrity blogs can rise to prominence and then fall down with startling volatility. Much of Blahgirls' longevity will come down to the content, which in the case of the SouthPark-esqe animated show makes it fairly watchable, even to newcomers.

Celebrity: Andrew Shue
Site: Cafemom.com
Shue, better known as "Billy Campbell" from the 1990s TV series Melrose Place is also the co-founder of Cafemom.com, a social networking site for moms. The site launched in 2006 and offers a place for mothers to share tips and stories and to come together with other nearby moms.

Status: Cafemom is doing very well. It picked up a $5 million round of funding less than a year after launching. According to the site, it's getting more than 6 million unique visitors a month.

Celebrities: Baron Davis and Cash Warren
Site: IBeatYou.com
Davis, the pro basketball player, and Warren, a Hollywood producer, are co-founders of IBeatYou, which is a competition site. Users can create challenges and have others compete in order to earn points. Much like Worth1000, it's become a repository for quirky user creations like photo contests and one-upmanship.

Status: Alive, although it's too early to tell where it will end up. The site launched in late March and has since picked up just under $1 million in seed funding.

The Baron Davis-backed IBeatYou is a fun way to approach casual competition for all sorts of things. In this case it's a photo contest.

(Credit: IBeatYou)

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Buzznet, the social network whose CEO told CNET News.com in April that he'd like to build "the next Viacom," has launched a sister site: Celebuzz, a community for enthusiasts of celebrity news and gossip. It's been in private beta for some time now.

Already dominated by the likes of Perez Hilton, Popsugar, and the AOL-owned TMZ.com, celebrity gossip is a niche of the Web that some might say doesn't need another outlet. But Celebuzz general manager Karina Kogan told CNET News.com that it doesn't matter. Research showed that celebrity gossip fans are more than happy to use "more than one source to get the same exact story. They're interested in different points of view, and frankly, they're happy to look at the same photo ten times, just in different settings."

She also asserted that Celebuzz offers something new. "There is no community dedicated to celebrity out there," Kogan said. "There are news aggregators, there are blogs, but there is no community for the celebrity fans."

(Credit: Celebuzz)

Celebuzz features a full-out social network with user-created content in addition to editorial content coming from in-house reporters, partner bloggers, paparazzi photo agencies, celebrities themselves, and "expert panelists" like celebrities' personal trainers and plastic surgeons. At launch, Kogan said, it's already the "fourth-largest celebrity site on the Internet, period," following People.com, TMZ, and Yahoo's OMG.

Buzznet itself focuses on music, but had already inked "deep partnerships" (read: borderline acquisitions) with celebrity gossip blogs Just Jared and A Socialite's Life. The two social networks are not yet interoperable, but Kogan said that's on the way.

Still, she said, they're meant to be kept separate. "We definitely don't want to shove celebrity media down the throats of music fans," Kogan explained.