Stop it. (Photo: Instagram)

Talking Orbit gum stick Ryan Seacrest announced today that he's producing a new program for Aol, but sadly (luckily?) it doesn't include any of the Kardashians. Rather, it's a 10-episode series with appearances from relationship coach Gwyneth Paltrow. The Web-only deal is his production company's first foray into creating digital programming.

Variety called the deal an "organic evolution" for Mr. Seacrest since his Internet prowess has racked him up millions of followers on Twitter and Instagram. Combined with his popularity, a presumably high Klout score and his connections with Valley big-wigs (like Twitter CEO Dick Costolo), he's become their go-to guy for communicating with middle America.

He even dines with techfluencers on the regular!

“I just had dinner with (Instagram founder) Kevin Systrom at my house the other night,” said Mr. Seacrest, taking a break during an “American Idol” rehearsal. “I get to know what Instagram is doing, but it’s not like that’s my agenda.”

No, your agenda is infecting the world with another Kardashian spin-off. KNOW YOUR PLACE.

Here it is! (Photo: GMA/Twitter)

Because apparently there aren’t enough music apps in existence, Twitter announced today on ABC gigglefest Good Morning America that it will be making its highly anticipated foray into the crowded music market. Along with a website, Twitter #Music (hashtag!) is a new, separate app for your iPhone that’s slated to be released later this afternoon.

Twitter explained on GMA that its new app “helps you find music that’s popular on Twitter and music based on the bands you follow.” The music discovery service is centered around four tabs: Popular, Emerging, Suggested, and #NowPlaying.

The first two tabs focus on the Twitter community as a whole and highlight what everyone in the world is listening to, while the latter two provide a personalized experience: Suggested helps you search for new music depending on your friends’ tastes and #NowPlaying shows you what your friends are listening to. It also takes public humiliation to a whole new level: “For instance, if your friend tweets that they are listening to a song by Justin Bieber, that song will show up on that page.” Sounds great!

It's important to note that Twitter isn’t storing any of this music, but aggregating it from three sources: iTunes, Spotify, and Rdio. Preview clips will be played using iTunes, but Rdio and Spotify subscribers will be able to log-in to their accounts to stream full tracks. Twitter’s blog writes that it's looking to add other music providers. Also, there's no Android version just yet.

Twitter explained that its service and music “go great together” since so many people use it to share and discover today’s hottest hits:

Many of the most-followed accounts on Twitter are musicians, and half of all users follow at least one musician. This is why artists turn to Twitter first to connect with their fans — and why we wanted to find a way to surface songs people are tweeting about.

Musicians, trendsetters and important E! hosts like Ryan Seacrest are already raving about it so it’s obviously the perfect tool if you love listening to music from Z100.

https://twitter.com/RyanSeacrest/statuses/322483675839221760

Ms. Mayer with Team Stamped (Photo: Instagram)

This is about as close as Marissa Mayer has come to being featured in an episode of Entourage. Today, word leaked that the new Yahoo CEO made her first acquisition--or acqui-hire, depending on who you ask. Ms. Mayer has purchased Stamped, a New York City-based recommendations app cofounded by two fellow Xooglers. Stamped cofounder Robby Stein worked closely with Ms. Mayer when the two were both still employed by GOOG.

Mashable says Stamped's team, five of whom are former Google employees, will be joining "a new mobile product team to be established in New York under the leadership of Stamped’s three co-founders." In a blog post published to the Stamped site, the team confirmed that they will be "discontinuing the Stamped product" but are working on a solution for users to export their data from the app.

Business Insider reports that the deal was closed for a ''a nice size," but nothing too hefty. That should mean some extra spending money for a group of people who have no need for it: Stamped's celebrity investors.

Back in July, when Stamped decided to pivot from a ratings app into a recommendations app--the company brought on a slew of celebrity investors like Justin Bieber, his manager Scooter Braun, Ellen Degeneres, and Ryan Seacrest--alongside established players like Bain Capital Ventures, Google Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures. (Stamped wasn't the only startup to give up on trying to rate things: Kevin Rose's Oink shut down in March.)

Stamped is bright, sleek-looking, and easy-to-use, but around the time of the revamp, we wondered whether it would be able to get any traction in recommendations--even with Biebs filming videos about his favorite things. The gamble may not have worked as intended. Mashable notes both the iPhone and web app will be "discontinued by the end of the year," with the team's talents now geared toward helping Yahoo transform from a dotcom relic into a mobile company.

For some insight into how celebrity tech investments work, check out The New Yorker's profile of Scooter Braun, who had invested in ten startups, including Uber, Stamped, and Spotify, when the article was published in September.

"Cross-promotion is all part of the interdependent business culture that Braun has created. For instance, he cuts Bieber in on many of his tech investments. Sometimes he has Bieber put money into a start-up company directly; sometimes he offers to have him promote a product in return for equity. “If it makes sense for Justin’s brand, I show it to him,” Braun said. (He has a similar relationship with his other artists, and with Ellen DeGeneres, with whom he has shared tech-investing tips: “She put me onto something, and I put her onto something.”)"

Twitter's new look.

Remember when Twitter was a mere fringe hobby, beloved by early adopters but mystifying to everyone else? Well, today we got a clear-as-a-bell reminder that those days are long gone, when the company took to the Today Show to introduce a new look.

Users can now add a header photo, and recent images have been relocated into their own snazzy box.

"What we've heard over and over again from our users is they want to bring more of their personality to the profile pages," explained CEO Dick Costolo. "So today's changes are all about bringing that personality forward, more media forward, more photos forward, so it's much easier to see these media experiences and flip through them."

Mr. Costolo was in the no-doubt rare experience of being sandwiched in between Justin Bieber's mom and a concert by Pink.

The announcement itself was preceded by a brief tour of the Twitter offices, guided by a reporter identified as hailing from E! News and introduced with the song "Rockin' Robin."

Interwoven with employee interviews and footage of the company cafeteria (which is apparently called the @birdfeeder) was an explanation of just what the company does and how ubiquitous it's become. The Biebs uses it! Obama and Romney use it!

"The draw is working on something that matters," Mr. Costolo explained, when the free snacks came up.

Once the brief office tour wrapped up, it was on to the unveiling. Mr. Costolo emerged from the green room to join Matt Lauer, Ryan Seacrest and that woman who isn't Ann Curry on the couch, in front of some strange red flower arrangement.

But not so fast--first, Mr. Lauer wanted to hear about Twitter's purpose in the long term. (You and me and everyone in the tech press both, Matt.)

"Twitter brings you closer," he said. "We see this over and over again from our users. It brings them closer to the action. It brings them closer to their heroes. Ryan's got--" and here he gestured to Mr. Seacrest, seated mere feet away--"8 million followers on Twitter. It's because he pulls them into everything he's doing. and brings them closer to everything he's doing."

Sounds to us like media might be winning the tug-of-war for Twitter's soul.

Finally, at the end of the segment, it was time to actually debut the new look.

He also added that the company is debuting an iPad app redesign, which is "all about letting people flip through photos and videos more easily."

Twitter explained the changes in more detail on the company blog, adding that, on mobile, you'll also photo streams below a person's most recent tweets.

Word came yesterday that image hosts were the next third-party services to get the boot, and from the new look it's easy to see why--a big part of this redesign appears to be standardizing the photo browsing experience. So as you consume your mid-morning coffee, you might want to take a moment to pour one out for yfrog and Twitpic.

(Photo: Instagram)

Sometimes the hardest question to get a founder to answer is why anyone would regularly use their app. That's particularly true for startups that solve a problem users don't actually have.

But often, the pitch for why X app is better at rating, or recommendations, or social planning relies on the assumption that it will be populated by users just dying to share their personal tastes or make plans  . . . using an app that's on screen four of their smartphone, right next to Draw Something.

That's been the problem with Stamped, a remarkably sleek ratings and recommendations app launched by Xooglers last November that allows users to give their "stamp" of approval to books, songs, restaurant recommendations, you name it.

Back then, we said, "Until we see how many 'friends' opt in, it will be hard to tell if Stamped is a signal, or adding to the noise." And unlike the steady ping of notifications for friends joining Instagram or Pinterest, not many have--and certain few outside the tech world.

That lack of engagement in Stamped, however, didn't stop a stream of celebrity investors including Justin Bieber, Ellen Degeneres, Ryan Seacrest, and Bieber's manager Scooter Braun, from plunking down an unspecified amount in the startup. The New York Times Co. and Columbia Records also went in. As did Eric Schmidt through TomorrowVentures, CrunchFund, and Metamorphic Ventures, bringing the company's total funding to $3 million.

The founders seem to be aware of the problem, which is why they're revamping the entire project, ostensibly moving away from their competition. "We’re a way to share your favorite things," cofounder and CEO Robby Stein told TechCrunch. In version 2.0, social discovery--rather than rating--is paramount. There's a section called The Guide to let you find new things to eat, watch, read, drink, etc. as recommended by the people you follow.

To that end, the company has integrated services like iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and OpenTable, so you can start acting on the "stamps" that interest you. It's also now available on the web, instead of just mobile. "It should be more like Pinterest and less like Yelp, they determined," Business Insider said of the founders.

TechCrunch noted:

For celebrity watchers, there’s an obvious draw to the new Stamped (what does Bieber like?), and for others, it may be about seeing what books NYT recommends, perhaps. But where Stamped still needs work is helping regular users build up their own collections of things – something that, while easy enough to do, can still feel like a bit of work to do at scale, in order to really create a holistic picture of your interests.

Since the revamp, Mr. Bieber has "stamped" four different things on the app, all of which he mentioned in the charming promotional video below. (Is that Selena Gomez we hear laughing in the background?) For some context, Lance Armstrong seems similarly smitten with his investment, the social networking app Mobli, whereas his fellow investor Leonardo DiCaprio is a little more blazay blah.)

I really like the idea of Stamped, and its design, but stopped checking when it failed to get traction. I hope they can get better engagement in the new framework and convince its celebrity investors to actually use it. Otherwise, why should I?

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that Mr. Bieber had been a member of Stamped since its launch last November and only used the app sparingly before he came on as an investor. The company informed us, however, that that account was a fake. Betabeat regrets the error. But can you blame us for wanting to beliebe?