Monday Grok: “Tough week, but went better than I expected,” Murdoch tweets

Plus: iPhone’s 5th birthday, Twitter ditches LinkedIn and Amazon’s bad weekend

Sometimes I just love Rupert Murdoch. Not evil Rupert, whose minions hacked the mobile phone of a murdered school girl. Not wilfully blind Rupert, whose underlings are accused of corrupting police and public officials as his company spread its malevolent influence throughout the British Establishment.

No, I love grand-pappy Rupert, who occasionally takes to Twitter with the kind of enthusiasm and relish that you just know embarrasses the heck out of the family. “Aawww, Dad did you really have to?”

After five tumultuous days when he finally and inevitably split his company into two wings — the Republican Party and Tea Party, as one wag noted — the multi-multi-multi billionaire took to Twitter to let us all know: “Tough week, but went better than I expected.”

Seriously, this stuff can’t just be made up. By way of reference, Rupert ended the week $700 million wealthier than he began it after his News Corp stock soared following the news that it would break itself in two.

Here’s what some from tweeting community had to say:

Sounds like a prostate thing. @rupertmurdoch: Tough week, but went better than I expected. @rutusjones

@rupertmurdoch you're referring to the Katie and Tom break up?

@rupertmurdoch I know what you mean. You split up a company, I split a peanut butter sandwich. #rulerpains @RoyalForumMoron

Same. Also, I wish I could eat ice cream. “@rupertmurdoch: Tough week, but went better than I expected.”@ Bookgirl96

@rupertmurdoch If you're after a real go-getter exec for the new publishing arm, there's an up and comer you should snap up: Gina Rinehart @ 4b5

holy hell @rupertmurdoch you better have a beer and sit down. Glad the week didn’t kick ur ass to hard. Good luck parasailing this weekend. @AyeMcShane

Not that any of this discouraged the charming old Digger. Later over the weekend he hopped into Mitt Romney’s campaign team. “Met Romney last week. Tough O Chicago pros will be hard to beat unless he drops old friends from team and hires some real pros. Doubtful.” Then he served it up to Tom Cruise and Scientology. “Scientology back in news. Very weird cult, but big, big money involved with Tom Cruise either number two or three in hierarchy.”

iPhone turns five

Henry Blodgett at <i>Business Insider</i> reflects on five years of the iPhone and the changes it has wrought upon the world — or, at least that part of the world that can afford such an expensive and indulgent toy — you know, that rich part where we all live but where most of the world doesn’t.

According to Blodgett, “It seems safe to say that never in history has a single product been so astoundingly successful so fast* and had such a radical impact on the world.”

Twitter ditches LinkedIn

Twitter and LinkedIn appear to have had a falling out. Grok received a note from LinkedIn Saturday morning telling him that Twitter would no longer allow tweets to flow through to LinkedIn, but it will still work the other way. Grok was very Clark Gable about the whole thing, frankly.

Still, what gives? After all, it seems like a relatively mutual beneficial relationship.

Twitter explained: “Core Twitter consumption experience through a consistent set of products and tools.” This just proves that a business model based on brevity does not guarantee to coherence.

So here’s a simpler explanation: Twitter has decided that it is now big enough to have its cake and eat it too… without LinkedIn.

Lost in the Amazon

Finally, it’s nice to know that in an age where technology seems to be all encompassing Mother Nature still finds a way of reminding us who is boss. Two of the net sectors’ hottest sites, Pinterest and Instagram, were reduced to using Twitter and Facebook to update their customers after a pretty horrendous systems outage over the weekend. The cause: Bad weather.

Actually, it's a pretty serious story that will probably have everyone reaching for their lawyer, most particularly Amazon whose service was tanked.

Grok was monitoring the tweet stream over the weekend and Amazon has started sending out notifications to companies suggesting some of their data may not be recoverable.

One of those to receive such a missive was serial entrepreneur Philip Kaplan — a name which some of you who are old enough will remember from dotcom 1.0. He was the founder of briefly famous F*ckedcompany.com. He tweeted the following on Sunday: “Got an email from Amazon that they're unable to restore Fandalism's DB instance post-outage. Thank god for backups. Ps- Back yo sh*t up now.” Irony or karma? Take your pick.

*Actually, the publishers of Modern Warfare 3 might beg to differ.

Andrew Birmingham is the CEO of Silicon Gully Investments. Follow him on Twitter @ag_birmingham.

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