Miami News Blog

​Ah, the Super Bowl -- that one time of the year when even football widows pay homage to pigskin. Silicon Beach caught the Saints-beat-the-crap-out-of-the-Colts game at Brickell Irish Pub, where a dozen screens afforded great views of men's scrotums covered in tight pants. The Celtic chips were also delicious.

But it wasn't all about the game or the finger food. It was all about social media, with the NFL (@NFL) featuring Twitter in big, bold letters and graphics on its homepage and creating buzz via the hashtag #SB44. As of Monday morning, #SB44 was trending along with the other reason we love the Super Bowl: TV commercials. #Bowl Ads 2010 and #Superbowl commercials were also buzzing on Twitter.

José Feghali on stage at the Lincoln Theatre, with a student broadcasting a piano performance live from Fort Worth.

​If you're wondering what the new construction is just behind Lincoln Road near the corner of Washington Avenue in South Beach, it's not just a new fancy building by Frank Gehry, but a cutting edge facility that will put Miami Beach on the map for music and technology.

It all started earlier this decade, when the New World Symphony (NWS), America's only orchestral academy, got seed money to implement an Internet2 connection via grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Science Foundation.

Internet2 is not your ordinary interwebs, but rather a special pipeline designated to government, industry and academic institutions. It's less "crowded" than the Internet you and I are used to, so it's more like the express lane on I-95 -- users benefit from exceptional transmission.

Screen shot from GMCVB community forum.

This picture is tame. There were way more tits, ass, vajayjay, and blowjobs on the GMCVB forum than you'd ever find on Collins Avenue.

​Gus Moore, founder and owner of Miami Beach 411, a decade-old website with one of the city's oldest and most active online community forums, has a hefty bone to pick with the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau.

It all began last week when Moore was surfing GMCVB's website and logged into its community forum. Moore, who could very well be called a leader in local social media for bringing a community of travelers and locals together online -- years before Twitter and Facebook -- was appalled by what he saw: An eye-popping infestation of porn spam, mainly from Russia, with NSFW photos.

In a blog post, Moore questioned why no one was moderating the forum when the GMCVB has a budget of $23 million and a staff of 70 and receives funds from the City of Miami Beach: "Seventy full-time employees and you can't control this garbage? The City of Miami Beach gives you $5 million a year to promote our city, and this is how you do it?"

"Love Begets Love," just one of many prints by Hugh Macleod, whom we've written about before.

​Geeks aren't exactly known for having the most seductive of charms, but then again, no one was ever born with a manual on how to properly express feelings of love ... or lust. So whether you are a geek in love or love someone who is a geek, here are a few romantic gift ideas for February 14.

Say "I love you" with a unique work of art. After all, chocolate makes you fat and roses wither and die. A print from Hugh MacLeod's "love" series is sure to last much longer hanging on your lover's wall. MacLeod himself is a geek of sorts and captures the deepest feelings of the heart in brief, but meaningful statements. Visit the Gaping Void Gallery to check out the series.

Take your emoticons to heart. Are you a total IM or Twitter dork who can only speak emoticon? Sweet Tooth Designs offers a sterling silver "<3" pendant with chain that is sure to please any woman with a soft spot for a geek.

Peter Martinez presenting at Refresh Miami.

​The year kicked off with a Refresh Miami meetup at the University of Miami's University Center student lounge. The presenter was Miami techie Peter Martinez (@orical), who is cofounder of Pikchur, a photo-sharing service.  Martinez enlightened the audience about the "cloud," which is basically geek speak for doing stuff online instead of your own hard drive.

Most of us are familiar with using online services such as Google Docs, for example. But on a larger scale, companies can host websites on the cloud and save money.

For web developers like Martinez, however, it's a little more complicated than that. "People think the cloud is supposed to save your company tons of money and magically do everything -- from hosting your files to washing your car," Martinez explained. "It probably can do a lot, but it's not as easy as the delightful name would lead you to believe."

The cloud, according to Martinez, refers to three major systems -- infrastructure, platform, and software -- all as a service. There are certain benefits and disadvantages to using cloud computing, which Martinez detailed in his presentation.

Photo by Alex de Carvalho

Great turnout at Crisis Camp Miami.

​Crisis Camp Haiti in Miami, which Silicon Beach previewed in a post here, took place last Saturday at the Miami Herald building. Nearly 100 techies, journalists, and other volunteers showed up, split into groups, and brainstormed ways technology can help Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Among the ideas set in motion were overhauling the We Have, We Need Exchange Wiki, which aims to help NGOs in Haiti with resources; working on mapping and Kreyol translation; and bringing Google's People Finder app to the iPhone.

In addition, the Miami Independent Media Center will work with tech companies, student journalists, and the local Haitian community to set up a Haiti Independent Media Center. And finally, one group will put together a database of local volunteer opportunities, which would eventually become be a 501(c)3 organization with a web portal.

Photo courtesy of @miamishines

Something to tweet about: scrumptious rock shrimp at Sushi Samba.

​Last week was buzzing with two great tweetups. On Wednesday, Sushi Samba held its first nationwide one, which Silicon Beach announced earlier in the month. Tweetup guests in Vegas, Chicago, New York City and of course Miami locations connected over the twittersphere simultaneously with the hashtag #sstwtup. The conversations were projected on a big screen and visible to all.

Miami's restaurant in South Beach was jam-packed. When we arrived, the hostess gave us name tags and seated us at a table. Yours truly decided it couldn't possibly be a tweetup if we were all dining separately without being able to connect, so a gang of local twitterati moved over to the bar and improvised.

Less than a week after Crisis Camp in Washington, D.C., a new application is ready to help Haiti's relief workers.

​Silicon Beach reported on Crisis Camp in this week's Wednesday installment. Just two days later, geeks from D.C. launched a mobile phone application called Tradui that facilitates Kreyol to English and English to Kreyol translations. The application is free and available for iPhone and Android.

In Tradui, you can translate words by typing them into a search box or scrolling through an alphabetized dictionary. You can also save time by typing in phrases. "We need some supplies" reveals a word-by-word translation of the phrase in Kreyol.

Mobile apps are not easy to build and take time to approve -- the speed at which this was created and developed is a testament to how geeks and companies can mobilize to help those in need. Tradui was built by Intridea in just three days, and because it's an open source, developers can continue to collaborate on the project.

​Haiti is in sheer survival mode right now and technology is helping in ways that will not only benefit earthquake survivors in the coming weeks, but also in the years to come.

Geeks have been pondering since last weekend -- the first series of Crisis Camps for Haiti took place in D.C., Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Denver, Brooklyn and London on January 16. A "camp" is an informal gathering where techies gather to brainstorm, share and develop ideas. In emergencies, they provide "data, information, maps and technical assistance to NGOs, relief agencies and the public," according to the website.

The work at a camp can result in practical technology. Such was the case last weekend, when campers started developing useful tools for the Haiti relief effort. According to a CNN report, campers put together "a digital map to help relief groups coordinate their efforts" as well as "applications for the iPhone and other smartphones, including a Creole-to-English dictionary."

Sef Gonzalez (left) clowns around with fellow burger aficionado, Carlos Miller.

​Miamian Sef Gonzalez, AKA Burger Beast, might not be the burger "king," but he has definitely turned his love of burgers into a growing social media empire. In a span of 15 months, thanks to his clever use of social media networks, the humble beef patty has become the focus of Burger Beast online and offline communities.  

Burger lovers have gathered around Gonzalez for feeding frenzies, including reconnoitering tours to joints such as Royal Castle. Burger Beast even threw an awards ceremony at John Martin's -- complete with fancy plaques -- where a friend of his proposed to his girlfriend after eating a few sliders.

Silicon Beach caught up with the affable Gonzalez at Charm City Burger in Deerfield Beach yesterday.

New Times: There's all this talk about you being a social media whore because you get so much attention. What got you started?

Sef Gonzalez: I would eat burgers everywhere I went, and my wife suggested that I start a blog. She came up with the name actually. It was her idea.

Tripatini is international in scope but was founded here in the 305.

​Tripatini, founded last year in March by Miamians Jose Balido and Dave Appell, is a unique social networking site for travelers. The website launched in late August and was dubbed "Facebook for travelers" by the New York Post.

Silicon Beach spent some time on the phone with Balido discussing the fledgling but already buzzing online community. "We sensed a need in people who communicate about travel," he said. "There are many social media sites for specific types of travel, but there was not one site for everybody -- whether they be a backpacker, a travel journalist, or a flight attendant."

​Twitter proved a powerful communication tool when a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit the island nation of Haiti yesterday afternoon, followed by a series of additional earthquakes well past midnight. Tweets began immediately after the first quake.

Trending topics on Twitter this morning about the earthquake are, thankfully, beating out American Idol: YELE, Help Haiti, Red Cross and Earthquake are the top four.

People in Haiti with mobile phones sent heart-wrenching pictures to Twitpic, a popular photo-sharing compliment to Twitter, soon after the disaster, including Twitter user Lisandro Suero (@lisandrosuero), who documented the aftermath firsthand.

Stop whining. Miami also froze its ass off in 1977. That's yours truly in Coral Gables.

​Record low temperatures, plummeting today into the low 30s, seems to have stunned Miamians more than the iguanas that are falling out of trees. Activity has been warm online, with a few brave souls publishing status updates while braving the cold.  

The freezing temperatures prompted Miami Beach 411 contributor Carlos Miller to confirm sightings of snow flurries that he first heard about on Twitter and Facebook:

"The initial report came on Twitter from [@WSVN] citing unconfirmed reports of snow flurries at the Town and Country Mall.... Then a few people who were hanging out at the Kendall Ale House further confirmed the reports on Facebook."

But in spite of the reports, and Miller's efforts to chase snow, it seemed like it would've been easier to find the chupacabra than falling flakes.

Via Mor10am's Flickr

Nobody's perfect, unless your social network is BeautifulPeople.com

​Beautifulpeople.com is so exclusive, it recently gave the boot to 5,000 members who popped a few buttons after indulging too much over the holidays, according to sources buzzing all over the web -- from Techcrunch to the New York Daily News.

The skinny ones on the site weren't happy with the fatties they were seeing on the social networking site, which describes itself as an "elite online club, where every member works the door." You better stay Stepford.

So after posting their holiday pictures, 5,000 so-called fatties who were no longer sexy enough for their precious peers were shuffled once more into the ratings system for re-approval. Only a few hundred were allowed back into the oh-so-accurate land of the beautiful. The majority of the pudgy rejects were from the United States, with the UK and Canada not far behind.

When I tried to join, I was redirected to a page that cited limited use due to extensive media coverage from the global launch. (How about extensive media coverage after acting like douchebags?) Ditto with the browsing option, which lets you check out profiles even if you're too ugly to sign up. So, ironically, BeautifulPeople.com is flawed -- their servers are crappy, unable to handle traffic. Either that, or they don't want press meddling in their secret chambers.

​Sushi Samba (@sushisamba), the popular restaurant and bar on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Lincoln Road, is throwing its first tweetup on January 20 at 8 p.m. The party takes place simultaneously with other locations in Vegas, Chicago and New York City.

The nationwide "meet&TWEET" hopes to gather Sushi Samba fans for a feast of food, drink and of course, Twitter talk. 

Silicon Beach spoke with the corporate office in New York City and was promised Miami would have $5 mojitos and caipirinhas. If that doesn't make you froth at the mouth, consider salivating over $4 to $6 menu specials featuring spicy crunchy tuna roll, crispy yellowtail taquitos, chilled Mediterranean mussels on the half shell and more.  There's even an exclusive TWITTERoll, a bit pricier at $8 but a bigger mouthful with tuna, avocado, jalapeno and fresh tomato salsita in rice paper.

Two thousand nine is history, so it's time to look forward to a busy year of conferences and events. Here are a few to consider:

Social Media Conference, a business event for the social media industry, comes to the Miami Beach Convention Center January 27-29.

BarCamp Miami, a gathering of geeks to share in an informal setting, is scheduled for February 21, location TBA.

Future of Web Apps, organized by Carsonified, will hold its third consecutive Miami conference February 22-24 at the Colony Theatre and the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.  The conference, which features workshops, focuses on all things related to web applications. Speakers will include Alex Payne, platform lead at Twitter, and Gary Vaynerchuck of Wine Library TV.

Via Optical Illusion's Flickr

​Rising up from a rather sleepy 2008, 2009 was a banner year for social media in Miami. Heck, social media became so important, the Miami New Times decided to hire a local freelance writer to dish on the scene! Here's an overview:

1. Clubs
Social Media Club South Florida covered the gamut of presentations on social media, ranging from corporate to creative uses of online and real life social connecting. Balloon artists, corporate execs, photographers, real estate agents and more in this motley crew mingled to discuss best practices. Palm Beach County, understandably tired of schlepping to the 305, branched out with its own club.

2. Charity
Miamians hooked up to help Camillus House through Social Media for Social Change, raising over $2,000 to help the charity for the homeless.  Oh yeah, and it was also a great party.

3. Workshops
Several workshops took place, including LaidoffCamp, which featured panels on social media to help job seekers and entrepreneurs in their quest for prosperity.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

​Yours truly recently dealt with an American Airlines screw up that caused her to miss a trip to Hawaii. So after writing a blog post, starting a thread on a local travel community forum and filling out an official contact form to airline customer relations, all that was left was Twitter.

A refund was issued over the phone less than an hour after the flight took off from Miami International Airport. But the trip was botched; it remains a mystery as to why.

A few messages to @aairwaves didn't solve the mystery, but the Twitter account did reply with a blanket response such as  "we're sorry and we'll do our best to help you."

Corporate Twitter accounts are only as good as their ability to actually solve customer service issues, but at least it's a start. The real social media power here lies not in the hands of the airline, but in an amazing little thing known as a Twitter hashtag. A search of #AmericanAirlines over a couple of hours yesterday afternoon revealed that at that time, the sweeping majority of people who tweeted about the carrier were pretty pissed off. It's no surprise, what with the insanity of holiday travel these days. Here's a sampling:

Image via Wikimedia Commons

​Ah, New Year's Eve in South Beach -- pocketbook gouging at its finest! Club buzz says Lady Gaga is the hottest sold-out party in the nation this New Year's Eve. LIV at the Fontainebleau Hotel is charging $800 general admission -- drinks, food, and party favors not included -- quite possibly the least recession-friendly soirée in town. Just think of all the Grey Goose you could buy at Walgreens for that amount or the brood of starving African children you could feed just by not blowing your rent on one bash.

If you're not in the mood to party like Tony Montana, and if crowds, excess, and risking a DUI turn you off, be safe and frugal by staying at home solo or with friends. This doesn't mean you can't share the party with people far and wide, though. So get your goodies together, turn on your webcam, and then:

1. Have a Seesmic party with friends from all over the world.

Seesmic Video is just like Twitter but uses video to engage people in conversations. One year, yours truly partied with friends in Boston, Ohio, New York, and Texas without leaving her comfy chair or spending a fortune. Yeah, it's not the same as a fancy party and fireworks, but, boy, did she feel better the next day. And the best part? You can delete anything that's terribly embarrassing.

Image via Nevada Tumbleweed's Flickr/CC 2.0

​Tiger Woods will probably upstage Jesus Christ at every Christmas church sermon this holiday season, if we were to use Google as a gauge of human inquiry. At approximately 7 p.m. EST on Christmas Eve, the world golf champion garnered 50,000,000 return results on Google, whereas the Son of God lingered behind at 46,100,000. But hey, Woods is definitely an example of thou shall not sin, whereas Jesus won the endorsement deal of a lifetime from the big guy in the sky.

Santa Claus, whom we can track on Norad, can barely keep up with Jesus, coming in at a mere 23,300,000 results.

Joseph, foster father of Jesus Christ, humbly lags behind the jolly old guy at 3,810,000. As was to be expected, Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, could barely muster more than 1,270,000 results, never mind that she put forth the savior through her virginal womb.

God trumps them all -- a whopping 481,000,000 results on the search engine could mean that spiritual inquiry is way more important than where Tiger Woods put his balls while he was putting on the green.

Happy Holidays from Silicon Beach!

More than 2 million registered users have worked with Scrapblog's easy-to-use interface.

Miami startup Scrapblog is apparently saying bye-bye to Silicon Beach and moving its physical office to the San Francisco area, according to word on the street. Though the company has not yet made an official announcement, everybody and their grandmother is talking about the impending transition. 

It's all over Twitter. And local geeks threw a farewell party for some of the California-bound staff, which yours truly attended.

Scrapblog is a superb, beautifully designed application for multimedia digital scrapbooking.  Drag-and-drop makes it easy to create gorgeous scrapbooks in minutes using pictures and videos. Users can share their craft online or in print.

Miami resident Carlos Garcia founded the company in 2006. This past October, Garcia stepped aside from his role as president and CEO. California-based Jill Braff took the reins, though Garcia will be still be involved with partnerships and continue to be an active board member.

Brian Breslin in the background, smiling among geeks. It was a good year.

​The year came to a close rather quietly with a laid-back cocktail party at the Mutiny Hotel in Coconut Grove on December 16.

According to Refresh Miami co-founder Brian Breslin, the group has grown considerably this year -- by about fifty percent, with more than 2,000 people subscribed to updates.

Topics in 2009 ranged from financing and legal issues for startups, real-time web, emerging web standards, to building a social network using Buddypress.

Refresh Miami wants 2010 to be even better. In a letter to followers, Breslin wrote:

In the coming year I hope we can leverage this positive community even more so in order to effect positive change throughout. I also hope we can use the tools at our disposal to bring more value to each and every one of you who actively participates in our community whether it be by teaching you new things, connecting you to new friends, or opening up new opportunities for you both personally and professionally.

Via Miami Beach 411

Gus Moore at the Googleplex, representing the 305.

​Very few of us have gone down the yellow brick road to see the wizard behind the curtain. But Gus Moore, owner and publisher of Miami Beach 411, the area's largest travel website, will have lunch at the Googleplex December 21.

Moore has opened up a thread on the site's community forum for questions, so if you have one, let him be the bearer of your great inquiries.

It's not the first time Moore has rubbed elbows with the search engine giant headquartered in Mountain View. The California native, now a full-time Miami resident for more than a decade, went to the Google campus in 2006 for a geo-developer conference. Moore has used Google technology for map mashups about Miami.

Leave your questions in the community forum.

Full disclosure: Yours truly is a freelancer and also writes for Moore's website.

Hugh Macleod stands by his South Beach inspired cartoon.

​Hugh Macleod is a renaissance man. Cartoonist, artist, blogger, social media marketer and friend of geeks, he's pretty damn good at everything he does, which lately involved an inspirational, no-nonsense advice book on being creative, Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity. The book is now a Wall Street Journal best seller.

The brilliant, if somewhat eccentric, Macleod currently calls Alpine, Texas home, but he's been making regular trips to Miami since 2005. And although he draws inspiration from the remote west Texas location, his art business is based in Miami. All printing, marketing and administration take place in the 305.

In his younger years, Hugh lived in New York City, trying to carve a niche in advertising copy writing. It was then he conceived the idea of drawing cartoons on the back of business cards. Eventually, he would start a hugely popular blog called Gaping Void, where he posted the cartoons and insightful writing that would become the basis of his book.
 
Macleod was in town earlier this week and spoke at a Tech Tuesday meetup in downtown Miami at Ecco Pizzatecca. His artwork was on display in a backroom, featuring a large print dedicated to our fair shores. "South Beach: Because Los Angeles just wasn't shallow enough" is printed under big yellow and blue circles.

Photo by Anthony Jordon

​No holiday would be complete without free booze, and as always, Miami New Times didn't disappoint. The tweetup was held at Waxy O'Connor's by the river, coinciding with another Miami Music Festival gig.

The Scenestress (@newtimesstreet) arrived to hand out name tags, but not many @ signs were visible. Present were a handful of New Times staffers, one of whom shared a delightful conversation about Caribbean travel and food with yours truly.

The Life Is Art (@soulofmiami) crew also showed up to support the event and enjoy some cocktails.

Miami's own Freddy Stebbins performing in character at John Martin's in Coral Gables

​Although the year in social media in Miami has been no laughing matter, the South Florida club decided to end 2009 at John Martin's last night with Freddy Stebbins's comedy show. 

But first, there was the usual mingling and networking, which this month included the guys behind a Cuban social networking site -- Cubaenlinea.net (more on that in posts to come).
 
Founder Alex de Carvalho (@alexdc) acknowledged the folks who made it happen, although half the officers didn't show. It was a good year, with several presentations designed to share insight into social media and its myriad uses, ranging from corporate to creative --- local tech giant Citrix has presented and so have artists in every media.  All have one thing in common: Social media connects people and businesses in positive ways.
 
The stand-up comedy, which takes place for free every Thursday, wasn't supposed to focus on social media, yet the comics still told a few jokes about Facebook, Twitter, and texting:

"I hate it when a santero sends me a dead chicken on Farmville."
 
"My dick is so big it has its own Twitter account."
 
"Cell phones are the cigarettes of our generation. That shit is gonna kill us 30 years from now."

Social Media Club South Florida typically meets the second Tuesday of every month. If you're interested in sharing and networking, keep up with the club on its website, Twitter, and Facebook.

Andrew Nelson (center) surrounded by new Twitter friends at Scotty's Landing.

​Andrew Nelson (@andrewnelson) found a new way to explore Miami that didn't involve a glossy brochure or lengthy travel guide. Instead, he crowdsourced his travel plans on Twitter, relying on the advice of locals to plan his five-day itinerary, almost all of it spontaneous.

Nelson, a contributing writer for National Geographic Traveler Magazine, would be a natural for Twitter; he also conducts social media campaigns for Peter A. Mayer Advertising in New Orleans.

Yours truly met Nelson at a tweetup in Coconut Grove, which she heard of just hours before on Twitter from Florida travel expert Hilda Mitrani (@hiddenflorida). November 29 was Nelson's last night in Miami and was a great example of how Twitter can bring complete strangers together in a real-life social situation. Several local Twitter accounts were represented, including @edibleSoFla, @lizawalton, @mango_lime, @hiddenflorida, @BAWLSGuarana, and @ktchntrvwr (who also freelances for Miami New Times).

It's the holidays, so expect more socializing and imbibing to wrap up a busy year in local geekdom. Here are a couple of events going on in the 305:

Social Media Club South Florida celebrates the season this Thursday, December 10, at John Martin's Irish Pub and Restaurant in Coral Gables, beginning at 7:30 p.m.  A brief presentation will be followed by the hysterical stand-up comedy of Freddy Stebbins. The event is free -- just pay for your own drinks and grub. Some drink specials will be available. RSVP at Eventbrite.

Refresh Miami meets up December 16 at 7:30 p.m., but no word yet on who will present it or where it'll take place. The event is seeking sponsors. As always, Refresh meetups are free. RSVP on Facebook.

Ford Fiesta Miami agents Maria de los Angeles and Brad Schenck.

​Maria de los Angeles was in Los Angeles this week, representing the 305 as a Ford Fiesta agent at the LA Auto Show.

The Ford Fiesta Movement campaign started in April, when the company gave a Euro spec car to 100 social media types across the country for six months. Yours truly was one of those 100, picked out of 4,000 people to represent the 305 as Ford Fiesta Miami.  

Along with team member Brad Schenck, Ford Fiesta Miami (@fordfiestamiami) produced six official project videos based on specific missions. The first one was all about Memorial Day weekend, featuring Jimbo's and Ocean Drive. The last one was a parody of Scarface, shot at iconic locations like Elian Gonzalez's house and the Carlyle Hotel.  In between, we geocached in South Miami, gator wrestled in Orlando, built a house for Habitat for Humanity (with help from great volunteers met at a Miami New Times tweetup) and dug deep into the local graffiti scene with artist Atomik . (We also towed the car down Flagler but that was just some rogue shenanigans.)

Art Log Live is a social site, bringing Art Basel to you one tweet at time.

​Art Basel has swooped in along with those denizens of the art world, and there's a nifty way to keep up with it all in real time at Art Log Live (@artlog).  The site, which officially launches today, offers a hashtag for every major Art Basel fair, as well as pop-up windows with dates, locations and descriptions.  There's also a Google map pinpointing events.

The main hashtag is #artbasel, which appears in a search window.  Follow it and you can be in two places at once, at least virtually.  Hopefully people will tweet insider dirt from the ultra exclusive parties for the benefit of the riff-raff who can't afford paintings or cover charges.

Folks who don't Twitter can contribute to the buzz by sending text messages to 41411.

Though not a work of art, a hashtag is a thing of social media beauty.  Being able to follow conversations about Art Basel on Twitter could lead to some networking among art lovers who haven't yet met in real life.  If you're an armchair art enthusiast, you'll know, at the very least, who's saying what about Art Basel without actually having to schlep anywhere.And you might even make a decision about attending an event based on Twitter.