How Much is Twitter Worth? Less Than You Think

Twitter, the San Francisco-based micro-messaging start-up, recently raised about $98 million dollars from T. Rowe Price, Insight Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners. valuing the company at a whopping $1.1 billion. NeXt Up Research, the firm founded by veteran financial analyst, Michael Moe, disagrees with that post money valuation, and instead values Twitter at about $526-to-$674 million. Read more at gigaom.com

Evan Williams talks about Twitter’s users and his struggle to focus on the task at hand.

Recently, Williams spoke on camera at Twitter’s offices with Adam Lashinsky for Fortune’s look at 40 rising stars under 40. He touches on why it’s okay if young people don’t tweet and his own struggle with focusing on the task at hand. An edited transcript follows.

No investor we have ever talked to — whether current or new investors — have said you need to get on with the moneymaking part sooner. Everyone who really gets the big vision has said don’t worry about that. You need plenty of money? We’ll raise plenty of money. Invest it in for the long-term. Read more at money.cnn.com

A Nerd’s Take On The Future Of News Media

It’s a cliche now, but I hear that the kids don’t look for professionally curated news, they feel that news will find them. Yakov Smirnoff style: old model, you find news; new model, news finds you. That is, we would look around for a newspaper or TV news show previously; now, we subscribe to the Twitter or Facebook feeds of those friends who have a passion for news. I see this everyday in the feeds I read.

The successful news organizations of the future will pursue models for news curation/selection which is a hybrid of professional editing and collaboration among talented consumers. Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

Soon to Launch: Lists

My name is Nick Kallen (@nk) and I’m the project lead on Lists, a new feature we’re testing with a small subset of users. The idea is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts. For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.

Lists are public by default (but can be made private) and the lists you’ve created are linked from your profile. Other Twitter users can then subscribe to your lists. This means lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts. Read more at blog.twitter.com

Twitter Continues Talent Scoop, Takes Digg’s UX Guy

Fresh off their new $100 million funding round, Twitter continues to scoop up talent from around the web to expand operations. The latest catch is Mark Trammell, who had spent the last two years working on user experience for Digg. Trammell will start his new job at Twitter in a week on the design team working to build a user research program.

Despite the loses, Digg still has no real peer in terms of size in the social news space. Read more at www.techcrunch.com

I think embracing failure is one of the things that makes this country such a great place to do business in. In many parts of the world, if you fail once, you are done. People won’t touch you with a ten foot pole. But here in the US, it’s almost a badge of honor. And our President explains why.

So don’t hide your failures. Wear them as a badge of honor.Read more at www.avc.com

So you have some news you want to get out there. You are thinking of issuing the standard old news release… Yet in the era of the “real-time web”, when new stories are found through services like Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed

how do you get people to pay attention to your news?

create an “Attention Wave”.

The opportunity has never been greater to tell your story in your own words.Read more at www.disruptiveconversations.com

Obama’s summer reading list

The list of books a president reads during vacation is often parsed for meaning.

Last week, Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton volunteered — even before anyone could ask him — that President Obama had brought along a pile of books on his vacation to Martha’s Vineyard:

* “The Way Home,” George Pelecanos.

* “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” Tom Friedman.

* “Lush Life,” Richard Price.

* “Plainsong,” Kent Haruf.

* “John Adams,” David McCullough. Read more at www.latimes.com