(Photo: Indiegogo)

"How Much Would You Pay To See A Photo Of Ryan Lochte’s Alleged Penis?" begs a headline on the irreverent sports blog, Deadspin. The post, which went up a little over an hour ago, is illustrated by a photo of Gawker Media employees clustered around a computer screen looking (and laughing) at an alleged photo of Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte's penis.

The pic, which is "a neck-down bathroom-mirror self-portrait, in which the tip of the penis almost but not quite reaches into the sink basin," was provided by a source, who is demanding a fee. Deadspin has decided to start a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo, probably because Kickstarter doesn't consider dickpics "art" (subjective!).

Unable to decide just how valuable a photo of Ryan Lochte's penis might be--both in cold hard cash and cold hard pageviews--the editors of Deadspin put the question to a crowdfunding test:

Do you want to see Ryan Lochte's alleged penis? Rather than bidding on some hypothetical market value of the photograph, let's establish a real market value. Call it Cockstarter: Our offer price will be whatever you collectively pledge to the cause, plus a contribution from our own budget. Based on your pledges, we will make a final determination on the photo by next week.

We decided to reach out to ff Venture Capital partner and Indiegogo investor David Teten to gauge his opinion on this important story.

"The adult content industry is suffering because of a surplus of free content," Mr. Teten told Betabeat via gChat. "That implies the market value of this photo is near-zero; creating an equivalent photo in Photoshop would take 1 minute."

"That said, I think the management team at Fitocracy should support this Indiegogo project, and perhaps hire Ryan Lochte," he added.

Additional reporting provided by Nitasha Tiku.

Rise and shine! (Photo:flickr.com/waferboard)

This man is not happy with Facebook: "Your team doesn’t seem to understand that being “good negotiators” vs implying that you will destroy someone’s business built on your “open platform” are not the same thing." [Dalton Caldwell]

Ears perked up over in Mountain View at this public display of unhappiness on the part of developers. [All Things D]

Speaking of Facebook, the company finally admitted it's got more fakes than a sorority house. [CNET]

Today, in patent-suit potshots: Apple accuses Samsung of “bad faith litigation misconduct.” [Businessweek]

Two boosters of the local tech scene would like cheaper apartments. Honey, spit in one hand, wish in the other. [Forbes]

In L.A., too many city hall employees are using their work computers to watch the Olympics. [LA Times] 

Mitt Romney is not a member of the "thumb tribe," which is apparently a thing. [Politico]

Mmmm, Orwellian. (Photo: flickr.com/revstan)

Twitter has not had a great 48 hours. After spending years developing a reputation as an especially open and free-speech-friendly platform, suddenly the company looks an enthusiastic handmaiden to corporate interests. And so it's none too surprising to see a lengthy exegesis of corporate policy, complete with apology, appear on the official blog.

Of course, the company had little choice after NBC ratted out them out to the Telegraph, revealing that Twitter had contacted NBC and suggested they file a complaint regarding the gadfly journalist Guy Adams, who'd been lambasting the network's Olympics coverage, including posting the email address of an NBC Sports exec. That complaint, of course, resulted in Mr. Adams' suspension from Twitter, thereby quieting his nonstop complaints but unleashing a torrent of Internet fury.

Twitter's tardy response, authored by general counsel Alex McGillivray, explains that, "The Trust and Safety team does not actively monitor users’ content," adding:

In all cases, whether the user is the head of a major corporation, a celebrity, or a regular user, we require a report to be filed at our abusive users webform. Not only do we need a report, but we need a report from the person whose private information has been posted, or someone who is able to legally act on their behalf.

Mr. McGillivray brings it home with the final insistance that "We do not proactively report or remove private information on behalf of other users, no matter who they are."

That's all well and good, but the policy clearly wasn't followed in this particular instance. And yes, Twitter owns up to that fact and apologizes:

That said, we want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up. The team working closely with NBC around our Olympics partnership did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules and encouraged them to file a support ticket with our Trust and Safety team to report the violation, as has now been reported publicly. Our Trust and Safety team did not know that part of the story and acted on the report as they would any other.

Chloe Sladden, Twitter's VP of Media, also issued her own mea culpa:

I want to personally apologize for this oversight: blog.twitter.com/2012/07/our-ap…

— Chloe Sladden (@ChloeS) July 31, 2012

But as other observers have already pointed out, this wasn't exactly an isolated incident. You can't ride two horses with one ass. Is Twitter going to be a media company, partnering with outlets like NBC to feed peppy real-time updates into its coverage? Or will it be an open platform, an unregulated firehose where gleeful users can pile onto and usurp a hashtag for their own, often anarchic purposes?

Meanwhile, yet another Olympian has been shown the door for offensive remarks made on Twitter.

That choice of official mascot with an all-seeing, all-recording eye just looks more and more appropriate, doesn't it?

Not to stereotype or anything. (Photo: flickr.com/s_w_ellis/)

This Olympics flap just got a little more embarrassing for Twitter.

For those just tuning in: Yesterday, after tweeting numerous complaints about the quality of NBC's coverage of the London Olympics, journalist Guy Adams was suspended from Twitter. The official reason given? Mr. Adams had revealed the email of an NBC exec and that it was a terms of service violation to publish "the private and confidential information of others." So once NBC complained, Twitter suspended his account.

That narrative looked a little suspect in light of the big, splashy partnership Twitter and NBC formed to integrate 140-character updates into the media monolith's broadcasts from London.

But a new twist reflects poorly on Twitter. The Telegraph reports that, in an email,

“Our social media dept was actually alerted to it by Twitter and then we filled out the form and submitted it,” he wrote.

“We filed a complaint with Twitter because a user tweeted the personal information of one of our executives. According to Twitter, this is a violation of their privacy policy. Twitter alone levies discipline.”

But now that we're taking another look at that statement, well, it doesn't exactly say that NBC found the offending tweet, now does it?

Twitter recently earned a lot of good will for its refusal to cooperate with the prosecution of an Occupy Wall Street protestor, instead fighting law enforcement requests for user information. However, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't cost the company that much to stand up to the DA's office. But letting a major media partner be embarrassed, in the middle of a high-profile event where NBC has integrated Twitter into much of its on-air coverage? Now, that's a different story.

We've reached out to Twitter for comment and will update if we hear more.

UPDATED: Mr. Adams' account has been reinstated. He says (on Twitter) that he's just received an email stating, "we have just received an update from the complainant retracting their original request..."

UPDATED II: The Wall Street Journal's Christopher Stewart has NBC's statement (in two parts) on the rescinding of their complaint: “Our interest was in protecting our executive, not suspending the user from Twitter...We didn’t initially understand the repercussions of our complaint, but now that we do, we have rescinded it.”

We're not sure who did the pushing or the jumping or what, but somehow everyone ended up under the bus on this one.

Not to stereotype or anything. (Photo: flickr.com/s_w_ellis/)

Time to check in on the Twitter-lympics! How are the first social media games going? About like we expected. Well, we're not sure who's pulling ahead in the athletic arena, but looks like we've already got an instance of outstanding PR clusterfuck. Someone's gonna end up with a headache over this one.

Deadspin reports that Guy Adams, a reporter for the Independent, has spent the last couple of days complaining about NBC's allegedly less-than-stellar coverage of the Olympic games (we wouldn't know, as we studiously ignore summer athletics). The tweets at issue are here, including such zingers as quoting anchor Matt Lauer's less impressive attempts to fill airtime ("Madagascar, a location indelibly associated with a couple of recent animated movies") and deeming him a #tosspot. Burn, ya'll.

Well, sometime over the last day, Mr. Adams' account disappeared. That left his fellow reporters to take to Twitter in restrained outrage, pointing out that the timing is awfully convenient for an embarrassed NBC looking for avoid any more allegations of fail:

My colleague @guyadams' Twitter account was suspended after @NBC complained about his tweets criticising the network's #Olympics coverage

— Kevin Rawlinson (@KevinJRawlinson) July 30, 2012

There's now a #saveguyadams hashtag, naturally.

However, Twitter's position seems to be that the suspension isn't about his criticism, but rather about the fact that Mr. Adams stepped over the line by moving beyond fomenting mass outrage about NBC's allegedly abysmal coverage (we wouldn't know, as we don't care for athletics) to posting the email address of NBC exec Gary Zenkel. From an email exchange with Twitter's customer support, forwarded to Deadspin:

Your account has been suspended for posting an individual's private information such as private email address, physical address, telephone number, or financial documents.

And:

It is a violation of the Twitter Rules to post the private and confidential information of others.

Well, aggravated customer feedback is a grand American tradition, no? If not, someone should tell the Observer's managing editor that he's no longer required to listen patiently to the occasional outraged little old lady. And we're frankly skeptical that an NBC Universal address really counts as "non-public, personal email addresses." For example, with a little bit of googling, we found it here.

UPDATE: Mr. Adams has posted his account of the events in question at the Independent. There's little new, but it's worth pulling out this point, from his remarks emailed to Twitter's head of European PR:

"Either way, [it's] quite worrying that NBC, whose parent company are an Olympic sponsor, are apparently trying (and, in this case, succeeding) in shutting down the Twitter accounts of journalists who are critical of their Olympic coverage."

UPDATE II: The New York Times has NBC's statement confirming that yes, they complained:

 “We filed a complaint with Twitter because a user tweeted the personal information of one of our executives. According to Twitter, this is a violation of their privacy policy. Twitter alone levies discipline.”

Twitter tells us they don't comment on individual users, for privacy reasons.

At any rate:

(Photo: Gif Hub of the Universe)

Get your own. (Photo: flickr.com/jspatchwork)

The first "Twitter Olympics" start Friday. And how is that going, so far? Let's just say the games are off to a rocky start, and we're popping popcorn in anticipation.

As we've mentioned before, the International Olympic Committe rolled into town with a long list of social media rules for athletes, volunteers and anyone with a press pass. The document concluded with a warning: “The IOC will continue to monitor Olympic on-line content to ensure that the integrity of rights-holding broadcasters and sponsor rights as well as the Olympic Charter is maintained.”

So how's that going? Well, it's not even day one and already an Olympian has been booted from the games for offensive tweets, athletes' complaints are going viral, and organizers are begging participants not to tweet about and therefore spoil the opening ceremony. 

Nor is Twitter their only challenge: As Deadspin reports, the organizers of the London Games somehow seem to think it's illegal to link to their site unless you're going to say something nice. (Trust us, that is not the case.) They've also banned WiFi hotspots from the games, along with heroin, skateboards and puppies. And let's not even get started on the free speech controversy.

We therefore can't help but wonder what'll happen with this attempt to turn the London Eye, that skyline-dominating ferris wheel, into a giant, Twitter-driven mood ring.

The Boston Globe reports that Sosolimited, an arts and technology studio, is using sentiment analysis to create a splashy light show. The firm has developed an algorithm that takes tweets tagged with Olympic-related hashtags, evaluates them for emotion ("lame," for example, scans as negative) and then translates them into a color, either yellow for positivity or purple for negativity. The Eye's lights will then be adjusted accordingly:

At 9 p.m., Sosolimited’s “visual­ concert” begins. First the day’s mood is reflected on the Eye. If, for example, 63 percent of the tweets expressed positive feelings toward the Olympics, most of the Eye would be lit yellow, with the remainder of the circle being black.

For the rest of the show, where images like smiley or sad faces are flashed, a yellow hue remains.

Given the London Olympics' rather determinedly upbeat flavor, we can't help but wonder what happens if that whole sucker lights up purple and proceeds with 20 minutes of frowny faces. Because it looks like a couple of people are already pretty cranky:

I already hate the London tourist 😡...giving you attitude thinking there on top of da world KmtI sure showed her! #Olympics #RudeAsHell

— Aiai Banks ❤ (@ladyshy369) July 25, 2012

Camera's up here, Zuck. (Photo: Bloomberg News)

What does it take to overshadow an Olympian? If you guessed "Be Mark Zuckerberg," please collect your prize. Bloomberg News profiles Samyr Laine, who is headed to the London Olympics to represent Haiti in the triple jump. Heartwarming! But it's not a news peg. You know what's a news page? Being the Facebook founder's former freshman roommate.

Asked about his youthful days with the billionaire, Mr. Laine presumably heaved a great, big sigh and said:

"We had a good time our freshman year in Straus, we played a ton of PlayStation,” Laine said in an interview at his home in Lorton, Virginia. “We probably didn’t sleep nearly as much as we should have. None of us slept as little as Mark did, and now you can see why.”

This man is literally about to go for the gold, and all anyone wants to talk about is some famous guy he used to bunk with. Ain't no problems like Harvard grad problems.