IT Buoy

On Monday night, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley posted a Flickr photo of a BlackBerry screen featured on the latest episode of the red-hot television potboiler, “Gossip Girl.” The text message on the screen (which I took a picture of here) reads, “Elizabeth Fisher just checked in at the Algonquin Hotel.” Wrote Crowley in the image title, which he also posted on Twitter : “Checkins on Gossip Girl? No mention of foursquare, but hey, still pretty hot.” Not hot at all, actually, because there have been zero checkins on Foursquare in the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite as yet! If you watched the show, you also would know they are too busy hooking up in an endless round-robin, with an occasional Belgian prince drug dealer thrown into the mix, to claim domain mastery of Geisha or Henri Bendel. (If you don’t believe me, see a clip from this episode, titled “The Hurt Locket,” below, in which Blair Waldorf is dressed up like a porn version of “Anna Karenina.”) But way to try to ride Serena van der Woodsen’s hip Prada coattails, Dennis. In fact, the note–which was sent to billionaire playboy Chuck Bass, who is searching for his possibly-not-dead-in-childbirth-for-which-he-has-blamed-himself-mercilessly mother, after running into a suspicious lady at his father’s gravesite on the first anniversary of his tragic car-accident death, who was carrying flowers and then dropped a locket with an engraved “E,” for Elizabeth, which was also his mother’s name…you get the idea–was from Bass’s private investigator, simply telling him she had checked into the hotel. As in, “Gimme a key and extra towels.” And not as in: Trying to be Mayor of the Algonquin Hotel. None of the characters on “Gossip Girl” would try to be mayor of anything, since they own the town . Which is also pretty clear if you watched the show–which just returned from a painfully long hiatus–as closely as BoomTown does. And who am I, besides a keeper of the “Gossip Girl” integrity?

Digits will be live tweeting the Shorty Awards — the “Oscars” of Twitter — this evening from New York. This year’s awards might not be as controversial as they were last year , but they do have an announcement from William Shatner — and acceptance speeches limited to 140 characters. Twitter Updates follow jenvalentino on Twitter

Some of this week’s biggest tech-industry tweets came not from Silicon Valley but from Russia. Associated Press “Rustechdel” — for Russian Tech Delegation — was hash-tagged by people like Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey , start-up investor Esther Dyson and actor Ashton Kutcher , who joined the U.S. State Department technology delegation in Moscow for a week of extolling the benefits of social media to Russians. From Mr. Dorsey , an observation on a deep difference between Russia and the U.S.: Tweeting about the complete lack of mobile phone usage in Russian bars & clubs #irony From Ms. Dyson : #rustehdel. Now at akadempark in novosinirsk talking w local entrepreneurs: easy to find tech talent, management talent not so much … And from Mr. Kutcher , a tough question about transparency (or is it transperency): How can the Russian government use technology to create transperency in practices #rustechdel *** We also read quite a bit about techies’ run-ins at restaurants

Facebook held onto Web visitors for more than double the time that other big sites, including Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Wikipedia, did, according to Nielsen’s latest report . AFP/Getty Images The logo of social-networking Web site Facebook is displayed on a computer screen in London. The average U.S. visitor spent seven hours, one minute and 41 seconds on Facebook in January, compared with just over two hours each on Google and Yahoo, 25 minutes on Amazon and 16 minutes on Wikipedia. While Google and Yahoo still have a bigger audience than Facebook, the social-networking site outpaces the competition in how much time its users spend on its pages. Facebook was also the only site listed in Nielsen’s Top 10 to see an increase in time-per-month, growing 9.7% from December. In June, Nielsen said that the average U.S.

Calling all job-seekers: President Barack Obama is looking for an official Twitterer. Associated Press Want to tweet for Obama? The Democratic National Committee’s “ social networks manager ” job description says the position entails maintaining the President’s accounts on Facebook , Twitter and MySpace . Mia Cambronero, who currently holds the job, “will be stepping down from my infamous role as ‘Barack Obama’s twitterer,’” she said in an email message posted to a listserv. “We’re looking for someone who is available to start immediately.” The new hire will work closely with the rest of the new media department to execute grassroots campaigns to advance the President’s agenda for change, the listing says. Among the qualifications sought: “Ready to work hard; this isn’t a 9-5 sort of job.” Obama’s team used the Internet, email, text messaging and social-media tools throughout his candidacy. He now has more than three million followers on Twitter and nearly 7.5 million Facebook fans. In November, during his trip to China, however, he admitted that he doesn’t use Twitter , saying he’s too clumsy to type onto his phone