In another confirmation that truth may be stranger than fiction, Hollywood trade mag Variety yesterday reported that Web 2.0 wunderkind Twitter is on the verge of creating a TV show.

Twitter brass confirmed that it's signed a deal with TV producer Reveille -- which has produced hits like "The Office" and "Ugly Betty" -- and with Brillstein Entertainment, a talent agency that also has production credits under its belt that include ''The Sopranos'' and ''NewsRadio''.

The result? Hard to say. In a blog post, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone downplayed news of the "project" as "a lightweight, non-exclusive, agreement with the producers which helps them move forward more freely." (FYI, Biz, that really doesn't do much to suggest that nothing is happening here.)

Variety said the show -- created by novelist and screenwriter Amy Ephron (A Cup of Tea: A Novel of 1917 and One Sunday Morning) -- would center around "putting ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format."

It's still unclear what this all means, though I don't envy Reveille and Brillstein the task of coming up with a show based on 140-character-long messages that isn't immediately ridiculed by network execs. Then again, NBC did pick up "Quarterlife" and ABC had "Dot Comedy," which I don't recall but is described (by a familiar name) as "a prime time series profiling the best humor created for the Internet." (If that description wasn't a red flag, I don't know what is.)

To the networks' credit, both "Quarterlife" and "Dot Comedy" were pulled after one episode.

And yet, Variety quotes Brillstein co-president Jon Liebman saying things like, "We've found a compelling way to bring the immediacy of Twitter to life on TV." Uh, yikes.

The NASDAQ yesterday became the scene (virtually speaking) of the best IPO in more than 18 months, with tech and financial industry observers cheering the news as maybe, just maybe, signaling better days ahead.

Can you blame them? With a soaring debut -- shares leapt 59 percent during trading -- the IPO was the first by a U.S. company on NASDAQ this year and this week's second initial public offering by a VC-backed technology play.

Oh, yeah. Yesterday's IPO was for an online restaurant reservation service.

That's right, OpenTable (NASDAQ: OPEN) shares ended up $11.89 at $31.85. With today's economic climate being what it is, can anyone be blamed for the outpouring of optimism around OpenTable's debut?

Well, yes. Though I agree OpenTable is a useful online service (of which I'm a longtime user,) I'm not convinced it warrants all the enthusiastic attention lavished on it by some market watchers.

Fortunately, I'm not alone.

"This is reminiscent of the 1999-2000 IPO pricings," Scott Sweet, a senior managing partner with IPO Boutique, said in a research note. "This IPO environment has not and should not see a pricing like what was chosen, considering the restaurant business is very prone to the recession."

In a Reuters report, IPO Desktop President Francis Gaskins called OpenTable's opening-day debut "over the top."

We're all only human -- born to make mistakes. Yes, that applies to even Google.

Some Web users this morning experienced a momentary outage that reminded many of yesterday's widespread outages at the online giant. This time, it's Google News that's appearing flaky -- generating 503 Server Errors when users attempt to visit the site.

Now, a little downtime here and there is (much to everyone's chagrin, especially an idealist like myself) an unavoidable fact of Internet life. And yet, Google's become so fundamental to how we live and work that we really don't cut it much of a break, do we?

So with Google having a not-so-hot Thursday, the prospect of a second day of slowness and downtime didn't exactly thrill many. Here's a smattering of the latest outcry on Twitter, which -- aside from its own persistent tendency toward unexpected outages -- is a good barometer for how some of the most Net-savvy among us are feeling. Or at least, the most vocal.

"getting server errors again going to @google news," Trellix wrote. "Thought this was fixed yesterday. #googlefail"

"Server error when I tried to log on to Google News. Trust in Google: down #googlefail" bwaber said.

"why is google news down...again!!!" damn2good wrote.

"ugh! why is Google News not working again!!!" matthewbhanson said.

"Is anyone else having trouble accessing google news?" jcsmith wrote.

"... ya, man. like, the whole world," joshgeek responded.

And so on. While we might be witnessing the failure of one of the most popular online services in the world, at least we've got Twitter on which to complain about it. And thank goodness for that, eh?

UPDATE: It's back now. #googlefail's over. Stand down, Netizens! Belay that freakout. Stow that outrage. And the rest of us: Just relax.

(Oh, well, that actually doesn't apply to users of Google Apps for business. You guys have the right to freak out as much as you want, as often as you want, because you're the only ones actually getting hurt during episodes like this.)

UPDATE 2: Well, that shows me. Google repaid my earlier, semi-defense of its occasional interruptions (above) with an annoying failure on Google Sites that wiped out a whole slew of updates I'd made, offering only "Unable to save the page at this time, please try again later" by way of explanation and apology. Sigh.