Of the 2,025 U.S. adults surveyed, 69% said they didn't know enough about Twitter to comment on the service.

Compare that to just 17% of advertisers who admitted to not knowing much about the website -- a group whose colleagues would, if they found out about said confession, probably take them out back "Old Yeller" style.

The minority of consumers who actually knew about Twitter were split on its effectiveness. Some said the short-messaging service would grow, and an equal number of respondents said it was just for kids. The remaining 8% are apparently too cool for the tweets, saying that Twitter is old news and that it's time to find the next big thing.

TV Networks, Paramount Digital Entertainment and Dickhouse Productions have launched Jackassworld.com as a global destination for all Jackass content.

The international roll out follows the success of the US site and will now be available in more than 30 languages and launches in UK, Italy and Spain from today, with Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands and the Nordic territories to follow.

Politweets rose up from all the great publicity twittertale got (and is still getting). We knew we had to take the same technology and use it for something a little more practical. Dan Croak of thoughtbot reached out with an idea to track the presidential election. This was one of the many ideas we had come up with but now that people were asking for it, we put it on top of the priority list. There was a definite need and I wanted to be the one to help provide that solution to the twitter users. Dan also offered his rail's expertise to help us get it out the door quickly (in time for the New hampshire primary). In three short days we came up with the concept, designed and delivered a product that we are all very proud of. This evening we made some minor tweaks, one being a better iphone experience (in case any one out on the trail needs up to date info), another in preparation for next steps/features.

Right now, there are four basic things you can send: messages, links, files, and events.

You might send an event out to a dozen of your friends letting them know you're hosting a party this Friday. They could easily get the event details you entered, respond with questions or comments and then quickly rsvp.

Say you had a great photo you wanted to share with all of your friends. Just add the file and all of your friends will get it right away. They'll be able to reply and tell you if it's cool. You could even post songs you recorded in your home studio to share with your friends.

That didn't happen, but turns out it is tying up with a UK fashion/style magazine Marmalade to create a print issue made completely out of MySpace submissions: it will feature cover-to-cover MySpace content submitted by users, reports Guardian. I guess they need print, mainly because Marmalade doesn’t have anything on its site to begin with. Users submit their work on MySpace's Marmalade page, and the magazine's editorial staff will also be trawling MySpace to find talent. The magazine is also going to hunt for journalists, photographers, stylists and illustrators to produce three reportage pieces, profiles and a featured interview for its March issue.

MySpace is to make its first move into print publishing through a deal to turn an edition of UK style magazine Marmalade over to user generated content.

Marmalade's March issue will feature cover-to-cover MySpace content submitted by users.

MySpace users can make themselves and their work known via Marmalade's profile on the website myspace.com/marmalademag, and the magazine's editorial staff will also be trawling MySpace to find talent.

The deadline for content for Marmalade's March issue is January 26.

With Zwinky, users create a visual representation of themselves online that can be customized to reflect their personality, fashion sense and current mood. Start with a compact "cuties" or more human-like "hotties" character and begin personalizing the Zwinky by choosing from hundreds of different hair styles, eye colors, skin tones, outfits, as well as makeup, accessories, scenes, and text greetings or symbols. Zwinkies can be changed or updated at any time to reflect how a user feels (and not necessarily how he or she looks in real life). And Zwinky creators can use their imaginations to try out a different persona or see how they'd look with pink hair, a Mohawk or trendy outfit.

"Zwinky is so much more than a typical avatar," said Dorcas Casey, a Zwinky spokesperson. "Zwinkies are an innovative way to let people carve out their own identity and express themselves on the Web. Some users view Zwinky as an opportunity to create an avatar similar to themselves, while others like having the creative license to craft a Zwinky that's completely different than their real life persona. Users can make themselves hipper, trendier or more glamorous by selecting various clothes, facial expressions, hair colors, styles and accessories. In a world where fashion trends change so quickly, it's an easy way for users to really get creative and try out all the trends without even leaving their homes."

The profitable site, acquired from online ad-sales representation company Gorilla Nation, is a top-five online destination for female teens featuring content from young authors. It joins the MTVN Kids and Family Group digital portfolio that includes teen sites the-N.com and NeoPets.com as well as the recently acquired gaming sites Shockwave.com and AddictingGames.com.

"Overall, we are all about super-serving our audience -- in this case teenage girls -- and this sees us continuing down that road to make this a destination site with a deeper sense of social networking," said Steve Youngwood, executive vp digital media at MTVN Kids and Family Group.

Backfence, a Washington D.C.-area start-up building a network of local community Web sites, said it plans a Web site for Palo Alto over the next two months, with other Bay Area towns to follow.

The community Web sites, which offer citizens' journalism, will be created as a result of Backfence's deal announced Monday to buy Bayosphere, a Bay Area Web site developed by grass-roots media advocate Dan Gillmor.

Terms were not disclosed. Backfence was founded by a market research executive and a co-founder of WashingtonPost.com in 2004 and is based in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Vienna, Va. Backfence develops Web sites focused on local communities with content created by the residents who live in them. The company has four community sites with a so-called hyper-local focus on the suburban towns of McLean, Reston, and Arlington, Va., and Bethesda, Md.

Bayosphere, launched in June last year, has close to 100,000 unique visitors a month, but Gillmor has acknowledged the experiment didn't turn out the way he had hoped. Gillmor, a former Mercury News columnist, received funding from the Omidyar Network, an investment group founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and from tech entrepreneur Mitch Kapor.

Meez is currently a free, Web-based service that offers thousands of facial and costume combinations, but Ryan plans to make money by offering users the chance to let their pixilated doppelgangers wear licensed brands, like Major League Baseball and National Hockey League jerseys, and premium clothing designs for a fee. Pricing should run parallel to the $1.50 to $2.50 price range that ringtones and wallpapers go for, he says.

Is there a market for this stuff? Maybe. Some 68 million people use instant-messaging services like Yahoo!, Google and Time Warner's AOL, and 60% of teenage instant-messenger users download free icons to represent themselves when they chat, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

And some competitors are already aiming at the same business. Yahoo! has offered up free avatars for almost two years, but the caricatures can't be personalized as extensively, and the pictures can only be used within the Yahoo! network. Palo Alto, Calif.-based chat startup IMVU also offers avatars, but the 3D images can't be used on other instant-messaging systems.

Meanwhile, Comverse Technology has announced an avatar service called "Klonies," designed solely for mobile services, but the product has yet to launch in the U.S. Ryan says Meez doesn't yet let users move the images to their phones but will eventually.