What's going on with our favorite Twitterati? Read what floats Jason Pontin's boat, discover the key to Shira Lazar's heart, and learn Aaron Task's wooing secrets.

Did you hear Twitter is now bigger than Digg? That's because you can't vote on Obamanaugural headlines by text message. More OMG Barack!!!!!!1!1!! tweets from the media elite:

Kurt Andersen is, at long last, giving up his column in New York, the magazine he edited 12 years ago. Now he has time for things that are, somehow, even less important.

New York magazine has dropped columnist Kurt Andersen, reports FWD. Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with the layoffs last month or the salary cuts reported earlier today, which the mag's publicity chief, Serena Torrey, tells FWD weren't really cuts: Staffers are actually going to make more money now, she says. Good, because Bruce Wasserstein can clearly afford it! [FWD]

Kurt Andersen, who invented "snark" in 1986, is now "microblogging" at Twitter, the official web service of imagined pithiness.

Gina Duclayan's Facebook album of behind-the-scenes Spy magazine staff photos shows the soft, human side of the carefully-calibrated snark book of the late 1980s and early 1990s. As such it's both a supplement and antidote to "Spy: The Funny Years," 2006's "lush, coffee-table format book" launched at an insidery party that reminded everyone how important (and establishment) the magazine's staff had since become. Somehow seeing the power clique in dorky 1980s duds and chairless apartments is much more comforting. At left, Kurt Andersen, a very young Daniel Radosh and Duclayan (clockwise from left). One more shot after the jump.

Post: "Reilly will be remembered as the man who... ultimately put together one of the biggest leveraged media companies in the industry in the 1990s." Times: "Mr. Reilly became embroiled in a brouhaha in 1996 when the company fired Kurt Andersen, the editor of New York magazine." (Image)

Kurt Andersen's essay in New York has more cliches than a dog has fleas. Adam Moss, thank your lucky stars he's smart as a whip or you'd be red in the face! [NY Press]

Kurt Andersen has been entrenched in the New York media biz long enough to know everyone in town, which is why it's not surprising that most of his 687 Facebook friends either work at the Times, New York, Vanity Fair, or New Yorker, or used to at one point in time. But then there are a few oddballs, like Penn Gillette of Penn & Teller. (They worked on a documentary together.) Some of the names you might recognize: David Carr, Barry Diller, Sarah Bernard, Kevin Sheekey, Rick Stengel, Jacob Bernstein, Jacob Weisberg, Gerry Laybourne, Andy Borowitz, Dany Levy, Jason Calacanis, Eddie Hayes, Steve Case, John Sloss, John Cassidy, Jerry Colonna, Fred Wilson, Matt Cooper, Jim Cramer, Nick Denton, Esther Dyson...

Kurt Andersen, the co-founder of Spy and former editor of New York and Inside.com, turns 54 today. Also celebrating: CourtTV creator Steve Brill is 58, hedge funder Dave Ganek is 45, and 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft is 63. Tori Amos is 45 today. National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry is 40. And Scooter Libby is 58. On Saturday, Kobe Bryant and Strokes singer Julian Casablancas will both be 30. Village Voice fashion columnist Lynn Yaeger will turn 57. Rick Springfield will be 59. DJ Timmy Regisford will be 45. Novelist Nelson DeMille will turn 65. On Sunday, Gawker chief Nick Denton will be celebrating his 42nd birthday. The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik will turn 52. Mel Karmazin will celebrate his 65th. Craig Kilborn will be 46. Dave Chappelle will be 35. Vince McMahon will be 63. Most importantly, Steve Guttenberg will be 50.

Think of how easy it might have been to understand Arianna Huffington's bloggy animus toward Tim Russert if there were a book out chronicling all the sordid details of their decade-and-a-half-long secret feud. (There is.) Every gossip-mongering gadabout should know the full backstory on every spat, falling out, and long-running mutual antagonism in media. Below are the volumes no shelf should be without.

So. Times columnist and former theater critic Frank Rich has a sweet creative consulting deal with HBO. They give him a paycheck, and he will sometimes call them up if he has a great idea (and Frank Rich has thousands of great ideas every day). He will maybe read some scripts and give notes. Did we mention he gets a paycheck? We don't begrudge him this cushy gig, but he should BEWARE. Another respected cultural thinker once went down this road, Frank!

Kurt Andersen, co-founder of Spy and former editor of New York, sees a future for print magazines. At last night's WNYC event, he said: "They will be beautiful luxuries, like sailboats in the 19th and 20th centuries."

After yesterday's story about a New York magazine critic apologizing to Harvey Weinstein, and the critic's suspect assertion that his apology was independent of the sharp-elbowed former Miramax chief, we heard from a well-placed media veteran who said Weinstein has long loved to brag about his ability to extract such concessions, and in fact about how he effectively owns New York media. It turns out the bragging is not entirely without reason. Said the tipster: "Name any media outlet and there is a 'best friend/recent connection that I [Weinstein] can call to kill stories/get a retraction' from." It didn't take a lot of digging to figure out what the source meant. A quick rundown of Weinstein's top-of-the-masthead connections:

We give up! 'Stuff White People Like' Book Sold to Random House For At Least $350,000. You win, Internet! Great work, Random House! Oh hey, Spy legend and man white people love Kurt Andersen "has taken an active interest in it and will play a role in its development." Thanks, Kurt! The press release says the book will cover "Whole Foods, Wes Anderson, Starbucks, graduate school, kitchen gadgets, Barack Obama, Apple products, the movie Juno, expensive sandwiches, and vintage t-shirts, to name a few." Looks like white people like New York Magazine! (ALSO: Gotham Books is apparently publishing a book based on "Barack Obama is your new bicycle." Maybe some joker should make a whole album of hilarious Rick Astley songs!) [NYO]

Spy magazine co-founder who didn't make quite as good as the other one Kurt Andersen has been named the Los Angeles Art Center College of Design's "visionary in residence" for the spring semester of 2009. Kurt, admitting that he "should be flattered," admits to actually feeling "embarrassed." Which he should! Because the position is a handy acknowledgment that Andersen has a history of not delivering on his grandiose ideas and has officially wasted his vast potential. That is more or less what "visionary" means, as we understand it.

The co-founder of Spy, former editor-in-chief of New York, and novelist, Andersen has been at (or near) the center of the media universe for more than two decades.

Walking omnimedia content factory Kurt Andersen gives Anglos "another reason" to vote for Barack Obama: if you vote for Hillary Clinton instead, the media will "unfair[ly]" count your vote as racist and "perception will be reality" and you will be part of "a depressing morning-after metric rather than a hopeful one." And Kurt Andersen would know: he's got the radio show Studio 360, a column in New York magazine, two books under his belt and an editor at large gig at Random House. Oh, and a blog where he predictably advises you to make personal decisions based on how the media might spin them. [Kurt Andersen]

Boy, has New York columnist Kurt Andersen got a challenge for you! The multitalented author's epic 2007 novel Heyday contained a factual error or two, he says on his blog. Nothing to be alarmed about, don't fret! They've been corrected in December's paperback version. But Kurt is an audience participation kind of guy, so if, dear reader, you're clever enough to track down the slip-ups, you win a prize! Sadly, it's only another copy of the book you had to buy to take part in the Kurt Andersen Challenge '08 in the first place. But it'll be autographed! Yes, by Kurt Andersen. The lucky winner also gets the unabridged 22-disc audio version, poor thing. But hurry, because Andersen's only giving you until April to play. To be fair, we have absolutely no intention of poring over Heyday's 600-odd pages looking for a mis-typed date, so if you happen across the errors, let us know instead. We will reward you by never giving you the unabridged 22-disc audio version of anything, ever.

The 'full disclosure of the week' this week comes from multitasker Kurt Andersen's 'Imperial City' column in New York mag: "I want to see Giuliani's presidential campaign harmed; don't you? (And I'll relish even more any exposure of [Fox News founder Roger] Ailes, who—full disclosure—once threatened to send a camera crew to stalk my 3- and 5-year-old children in preemptive retaliation for a magazine story I was writing about his man Rush Limbaugh.)" [NY]