(Photo: Lynton Web)

A year-long study conducted by the Pew Research Center has confirmed what we've known all along: Twitter is a rotten cesspool of smug, cynical douchebags consistently trying to out-mean and one-up each other. Oh, had you not noticed?

The study compared the tone of tweets to national polls regarding eight major national events, and found that though sometimes Twitter responses skewed liberal and sometimes they skewed conservative, they were almost always negative. Like, way more negative than the average member of the American public. "Often it is the overall negativity that stands out," reads the study. We're all a bunch of negative nancies, okay?

Still, the overall negativity on Twitter over the course of the campaign stood out. For both candidates, negative comments exceeded positive comments by a wide margin throughout the fall campaign season. But from September through November, Romney was consistently the target of more negative reactions than was Obama.

The study points out that the difference in opinion between Twitter users and the general public has a lot to do with the types of people who congregate on Twitter, specifically during newsworthy events. They tend to be younger and more Democratic, and tweets of those under 18 and in different countries were included in the study, whereas these demographics can't participate in national polls. Also, they probably have seen Mean Girls one too many times.

Wait 'til the Gowanus Dolphin guy hears about this.

Another rainy day in NYC. (Photo: wired New York)

Zynga has lost another exec. The struggling company's chief game designer Brian Reynolds has resigned. [VentureBeat]

Sorry, Facebook: Twitter is now the fastest-growing social platform in the world. No data yet on who owns the universe, though. [GlobalWebIndex]

Netflix wants to become the next HBO. So, lots of shows with gratuitous nudity and cursing just 'cuz, "It's premium cable, man." [The Verge]

McDonald's is the new study hall. Hey, it's not like the library has french fries. [Wall Street Journal]

Startup visas may soon become a thing after the President endorsed them in a recent speech. But what about all those lawless seafaring incubators? [Huffington Post]

The morning after the first snow. (Photo: Flickr/tomasfano)

The CEO's of AppNexus and LocalResponse we're always besties. [PandoDaily]

Alexia Tsotsis breaks down what exactly rubs Valley-ites so wrong about Start-Ups: Silicon Valley: "We’re so snobby we’re above snobbery." [TechCrunch]

Who convinced President Obama to convene with the forever alones on Reddit? His crack team of data crunchers, of course. [Time]

Even a superstorm can't break the internet. [AllThingsD]

We didn't see the Fail Whale once during election night, even as tweets poured by. Twitter VP of infrastructure ops Mazen Rawashdeh credits the company's stellar performance with its backend overhaul from Ruby to Java. [Twitter Blog]

Screenshot from http://zone-h.org/archive

In response to a right wing website's allegation they sustained a cyber attack from Chinese hackers, the White House has admitted to Politico that the attack occurred. However, the Obama Administration insists no data was stolen and classified systems were not compromised.

An unnamed official told Politico that the attempted hack was essentially an isolated incident in which a staffer received an email carrying a malware attachment. To be clear, everything is cool now and rogue Chinese hackers won't be taking control of the suitcase containing nuclear launch codes any time soon:

None of the White House’s secure, classified computer systems were affected, said the official, who reached out to POLITICO after the Free Beacon story appeared — without having been asked for comment. Nor had there been any attempted breach of a classified system, according to the official.

As Politico notes, the Washington Free Beacon, which broke the news of the attack, has a clear right wing agenda and has worked to portray the current administration as weak on foreign policy. The same site has also alleged that Russian nuclear subs were patrolling in U.S. territory, a charge denied by the Department of Defense.

There's no doubt there are teams of possibly Chinese government-sponsored hackers at work attempting to dig into all sorts of Western systems--Telvent Canada, an energy industry giant, was hacked sometime around Sept. 11.

Also not the star at tonight's event.

With the GOP nominee (mostly) squared away, the general election is just getting warmed up. That, of course, means that it's now fundraising time--and the Obama administration is deploying a rather novel strategy to attract donors. The Atlantic reports that, at an event tonight in Brooklyn, the star attraction will be neither a movie star nor a rock and roller, but rather two of the campaign's technology staffers. Geek chic, Washington-style.

The event overall is pretty clearly targeted at the city's tech community--and it wouldn't be the first time the local scene turned out for the president, either. Heck, Union Square Ventures even put a political "advocate" on their payroll who can "use the Internet to save the Internet.” The venue: PowerHouse Arena in DUMBO. The title: "The Obama Campaign's Digital Strategy: An Inside Perspective." The stars are Obama for America's digital director Teddy Goff and chief digital strategist Joe Rospars. Anyone who can get an audience with those guys is likely to hear some interesting stuff, given the cutting-edge strategies the campaign is reportedly deploying.

The Atlantic evaluates the appeal:

Even more than your average chance to financially support the candidate of your choice, there's something for everyone involved to love about these tech world funders. For the geeks, who love nothing better than process, there's a bit of fundraising psychology at work: A chance to get the real "inside perspective" on the Obama campaign's operations is an appealing prospect, as is the chance to participate in a roundtable discussion that might address not only tech practice, but technology and information policy. And there are other elbows worth rubbing in the room.

Isn't that what they call a virtuous circle?

Naturally, the bill will take web companies' interests into account as well:

The President’s privacy framework assures that as new Internet services develop privacy rules will keep up with, and not hamper, the pace of innovation. This framework takes advantage of the flexibility of self-regulatory processes but assures that new codes of conduct are guided by a comprehensive, forward-looking set of privacy principles and that all interested parties such as consumer advocates have a voice in the process.

CNET noted that this bill coincides with growing criticism of giant companies like Google for their lax protection of individual consumers' online privacy. That's why the portion of the White House announcement detailing the meaning of "Individual Control" may make the more staunch privacy advocates suspicious: "Companies should provide consumers appropriate control over the personal data that consumers share with others and over how companies collect, use, or disclose personal data." (Emphasis added.)

Skeptics of the strength of the bill may ask: who determines what is "appropriate?"

Be nice to the noob

The President started a Tumblr today, another arrow in the old social media quiver leading into the 2012 campaign.

According to his Hello, World post, "We’d like this Tumblr to be a huge collaborative storytelling effort—a place for people across the country to share what’s going on in our respective corners of it and how we’re getting involved in this campaign to keep making it better."

President Obama knows a thing or two about dealing with unruly opponents. But this is the internet we're talking about. 4Chan. Anonymous. Seriously pissed off flamers.

As he has done so many time during his administration when dealing with contentious Republicans, President Obama began by extending the olive branch.

"There will be trolls among you: this we know. We ask only that you remember that we’re people—fairly nice ones—and that your mother would want you to be polite."

Sigh. Steve Jobs got the chance to weigh in posthumously on Obama's problems in office via his autobiography: "He's having trouble leading because he's reluctant to offend people or piss them off."

Trolls don't have mothers,  Mr. President. They are the internet id. You cannot appeal to their sensible side. You need to get a big ban hammer, and wield it with impunity.

via @lizgannes