By Guest Author Jacob Nahin

Cream-colored walls. Cushioned sofas. The smell of succulent Indian food wafts through the air and reaches my nostrils. “It’s going to be a filling night,” I think. I was right.

Photo courtesy Kevin Winston

Digital LA, founded by Kevin Winston and known for its hip mixers and stacked panels, held its “Entertainment Goes Social Panel” August 13 at the Writer’s Guild of America in LA My expectations going into the event were modest, for no other reason than I like to go with an open mind. Besides, it was going to be a little difficult to beat the tweet-up with LA-tech noteables Daniel Egan and KW before the panel. I won an Xbox 360 at TwiistUp a couple weeks earlier and Daniel passed off the prize to me at a nearby Starbucks. ‘Turns out the best was yet to come.

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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone just announced the launch of “Phase One” of a Re-tweet API called “Project Retweet” on the Twitter blog.

Aside from the fact that this actually seems pretty rad (buh bye copying and pasting!) one of the most striking (IMHO) things about the post is how skillfully Biz has drawn the impromptu API mock-up.

Artwork by Biz Stone

It’s beautifully rendered and makes me wish (albeit briefly) for a hand-drawn sketch version of the popular micro-blogging service. Hey if this Twitter thing doesn’t work out, maybe Biz could hit up the art world?

I was joking about this last week and then it actually happened. Now I’m thinking www.bitchstolemytweet.com should be a place when people can register complaints:

For example, Michael Arrington (@arrington) “stole my tweet” about a LAWeekly.com article today and attributed it to Facebook, by making it look like @facebook had actually re-tweeted it.

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Valley behemoth Facebook just bought 12-person startup and vanguard of the real-time web Friendfeed. Once again,Techcrunch’s Jason Kincaid had the scoop at least 20 minutes before tech badass Kara Swisher at All Things D got the press release (we too had to find out the Techcrunch way).

What does this mean for the info economy (i.e. the way we report news)?

Well, Friendfeed’s biggest evangelist, Robert Scoble, who confirmed to LAWeekly.com that he did not get the news before Arrington, had this answer to the question on everybody’s mind:

Is the Friendfeed platform going to fold into Facebook?

Read more at “Facebook Buys Friendfeed, Because Techcrunch Says So.”

I LOVE when they start talking about selling marijuana once CA makes it legal. It’s funny ’cause it’s true.

Video courtesy Rock Cookie Bottom.

I blog hard. But does that mean I’m a citizen journalist?

This and more answered at today’s Social Media Club panel at Mahalo. which I will be moderating.

If you’re one of those people that likes to do their homework before the event, check out Social Media Club coordinator Geoff Brown’s compilation of citizen journalism related links.

See you tonight!