As talk in Silicon Valley turns to Facebook's diminishing valuation and suggestions that Google may one day be forced to write off its $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube, Fortune writer Adam Lashinsky notes a wave of déjà vu washing over him as he sits down to interview Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Dorsey is another young full-of-swagger entrepreneur whose company has managed to raise millions in VC funding. Like Facebook and YouTube before it, Dorsey's Twitter is enjoying Next Big Thing status in the media. It also has no revenue model to speak of. "We'll monetize when the time is …

How is Twitter able to maintain such a large, loyal audience despite persistent service outages? TechCrunch's Gregor Hochmuth argues that the mini-blogging service reaches a wide variety of users who would never dream of starting a blog or using an RSS reader. There's also something about releasing a tweet and knowing your friends will receive it-even if it doesn't exactly work that way (in actual fact, anyone who wants to can follow you on Twitter, whether that person is your friend or not). But from a user's perspective, those receiving your messages are people you know, people who care …

The New York Times asks the old, familiar question of whether Google is a media company. The paper's answer, an emphatic "maybe," hinges on its interpretation of the search giant's new encyclopedia service, Knol, a Web site where experts publish (and profit from) their knowledge on a variety of topics. Knol is a direct competitor to Wikipedia, which is ad-free, collectively edited, and happens to be one of the most widely used sites on the Web. Knol, by comparison, is limited to experts who give bylines to their articles and retain editing control over the content. They also choose where …

Users have downloaded more than 60 million programs since last month's launch of the iPhone App Store, CEO Steve Jobs announced on Monday, adding that if sales maintain their current pace, Apple will generate at least $360 million a year in new revenue. In other words, Apple is making about $1 million a day from the App Store. "This thing's going to crest a half a billion, soon," Jobs told The Wall Street Journal. "Who knows, maybe it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time. I've never seen anything like this in my career for software." …

After posting record Web traffic for July, the Los Angeles Times patted itself on the back in a congratulatory email that made its way to the blogosphere. Nick Denton, "the evil genius blogmaster at Gawker Media" (according to Peter Kafka), saw the Times' record traffic of 127 million page views, and scoffed. "That's cute," he said. Kafka points out that Denton's blog empire, which includes twelve sites, recorded its own record July, generating twice the traffic of the country's fourth-largest newspaper: 254 million page views. Meanwhile (following the most recent round of job cuts), the Times has a newsroom staff …