The media -- of which we're admittedly a part -- gives Apple an excessive amount of attention, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Pew found that 15.1% of all tech articles were primarily about Apple. Google, meanwhile, dominated about 11.4% of tech coverage, while Microsoft commanded a far more modest 3%. "Apple is especially effective at seizing journalists' attention," writes The New York Times, citing comments from Amy Mitchell, deputy director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. What's Apple's trick? Generating excitement for new devices and Apple's …

How have marketers responded to Twitter's efforts to carry their messages? With "mixed reviews," reports The Wall Street Journal. "The popularity of Twitter has fueled expectations that marketers could use the service to target relevant ads to consumers interested in real-time information about breaking events and other topics," reports The Journal. "Some marketers say that early results are promising but that advertising on Twitter remains an experiment ... Other marketers, including PepsiCo's beverage brands and Best Buy, who tested out Twitter's new ad products haven't made new ad buys." Regarding Twitter as a suitable platform for marketers, …

Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are in trouble, or at least in the area of mobile advertising. "Apple may be gaining share in the U.S. mobile advertising market this year at the expense of Google and Microsoft," reports Bloomberg/Businessweek. Apple will end the year with 21% of the market, estimates researcher IDC. Google's share will drop to 21% from 27% year-over-year -- when combined with results from AdMob, the ad network it bought in May. Microsoft's share, meanwhile, will drop to 7% from 10%. This year, ICD predicts that mobile advertising may more than double domestically to almost $500 million. Also …

Ever wondered how particular industry luminaries experience Twitter? Well, wonder no more. A new service named Twtroulette lets anyone obverse the preferred Twitter streams of industry leaders, influencers, and the like. Angel investor Shervin Pishevar collaborated with 15 year-old iTunes Instant creator Stephen Ou to create Twtroulette.com in about a week, according to TechCrunch. Pishevar was reportedly "intrigued by the experience of viewing a friend's Twitter timeline." Non-luminaries can volunteer their own timelines by adding themselves to the directory. "And, like Chatroulette, there's a random function so one can shuffle through profiles if they're feeling lucky," notes TechCrunch. …

And then there are those who would say to let Facebook go down forever, and "good riddance": Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten doesn't think much of Facebook, which he has described as "an ocean of banalities shared among persons with lives so empty they echo." More than mere opinion, however, Weingarten says it is now possible to mathematically quantify Facebook's cultural uselessness thanks to Openbook -- a search engine for Facebook "status alerts." With Openbook, one can search for a word or phrase and find out not only how often it has been used in status …

This week's news that Mark Zuckerberg would donate up to $100 million to Newark city schools left skeptics wondering what the Facebook founder was up to. Is Zuck worried that the forthcoming Facebook movie will cement some negative perceptions about him and his brand? Did word that his fortune is now estimated to be $6.9 billion send him over the edge? Did Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis calling Zuck "an amoral, Asperger's-like entrepreneur" earlier this year leave a mark? Not at all, says Zuckerberg. Quite simply, "Education has always been important to me and my family," he writes in …

Netflix has entered into an expanded license agreement with NBC Universal, which that expands the media company's presence on Netflix Instant to include other NBCU programming from USA Network and Syfy. "NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker may think that 99 cents is too cheap to rent a TV episode, but whatever Netflix is offering them appears to work," NewTeeVee says of the deal. More than 75 episodes of Syfy's Battlestar Galactica as well as Destination Truth and Eureka will now be available on the service, as well as the USA series Psych, In Plain Sight and Monk. Aklso …

Over the past year, Zynga made the biggest leap on Business Insider's Digital 100 list of most valuable Web startups. Increasing its common stock value by $3.8 billion helped the social game maker move up from #12 to #2 on the list. Facebook topped our list again, with a valuation of $25 billion -- up remarkably from $6.5 billion last year. "Facebook continues to grow at a tremendous clip and now has more than 500 million users worldwide," notes Business Insider. "The company will generate revenue of over $1 billion in 2010 and become cash flow positive." …

Unfortunately for Facebook, the top social net picked a slow news day to suffer its "worst outage" in over four years. In what The New York Times calls "a fairly technical mea culpa," Facebook said the outage lasted 2.5 hours, and was caused by an "unfortunate handling of an error condition." That gave industry watchers plenty of time to read into the glitch, and even question whether Facebook is ready to rule the Web. "Facebook has generally had a good track record in terms of keeping its homepage alive, but …

About those venture capitalists that TechCrunch's Michael Arrington claimed were involved in collusion and price-fixing. Well, while the whole idea seemed "so unlikely," an email sent by investor Ron Conway shows that there is what VentureBeat is calling a "real fracture in the angel group about whether there was an attempt at collusion." In the email, "Conway is clearly indignant that his SV Angels group colleague, David Lee, attended the meetings where the alleged collusion took place and didn't realize that the aim of the meetings (more than one, clearly) was some kind of collusion scheme," writes VentureBeat.