It looks like Netflix might have a problem. Last night in a blog post by CEO Reed Hastings, the company announced that it would be splitting its movie streaming and DVD-by-mail services into two different companies: Netflix and Qwickster, respectively. Qwikster.com is already up and ready to go but they forgot, as Mashable points out, to secure the @Qwikster twitter handle as well. Oops?

An online petition signed by some 100,000 people is attempting to convince Apple to pull an app designed by Exodus International.

The group, founded in 1976, originally claimed to help “cure” participants of their homosexuality through the power of Christ. Over the years, the group has decided to alter its mission statement and no longer claims that a “cure” is guaranteed.

After writing an angry e-mail to the White House in which he calls Barack Obama, seventeen-year-old Briton Luke Angel got himself forever banned from stepping on U.S. soil.

Angel wrote the e-mail after watching a television documentary about 9/11. A few days after pressing send, local British police came to his house, took his picture, and told him he’d never be able to enter the United States.

Mashable, the social media blog, is reporting that a new app for Twitter will allow users to compare the fans of different celebrities and see which group is “stupider”. Stupid Fight was created by Tom Scott, a designer who also created the equally mischievous Tweleted, and will probably cause anyone who uses it to become completely addicted…for at least a few hours. Of course, in a world where complex thoughts are broken down to fit into 140 characters, a few hours is nearly a lifetime.

Newspapers are dying, magazines are dying: this is the story of 2009 where the media is concerned. However, the future of media, such as it is, does not look quite so dim. Or dim at all, really. Obviously, the brave new media world that we are slowly moving into (some at a quicker pace than others!) will look entirely different in twelve months’ time, likely in large part due to the efforts of the folks we listed on our online editors of the year poll. So who gets the final nod? Our picks below: feel free to add yours in the comments section.

When looking ahead at the next year, pundits turn into prognosticators. Bloggers covering all sorts of topics and industries are now giving their predictions for what’s to come in 2010. Conventional wisdom says to go the conservative route with these choices in order to avoid looking foolish when none of your projections pan out. At the same time, there’s a key difference between picking things that are realistically possible and those that are already on the road to happening. I’ve assembled my favorite predictions covering a variety of fields and what’s supposedly in store for the near future:

If 2009 was a tough year for magazines and newspapers — and boy, was it ever — it was a bang-up year for the editors of the blogs listed here. Now we are asking you, our loyal, smart, and attractive readers to share your thoughts on who had the biggest year in the Online Editor category:

As we approach the start of a new decade, it seems new methods will be perceived as romantic. Forget the skywriter at the beach or the JumboTron at the big game — we’re entering an era of marriage proposals via social networks, and the city-centric meet-up software FourSquare just scored its first when Alex Marsh checked in at dinner with his girlfriend, adding “popping the question!” to his message, knowing full well that she would receive the update. She said yes — and checked in on Foursquare, as reported by Mashable.

Esquire‘s innovation doesn’t end with December’s augmented reality 3-D Robert Downey Jr. In fact, that’s just the beginning, as now they’ve rolled out a completely digital version of January’s “Meaning of Life” issue. The Hearst title is one of the first to offer a paper-less version of such quality, not through the world wide web, but with an iPhone app. For $2.99 you can buy the whole January issue in a format designed optimally for your Apple brand mobile smartphone.

Why didn’t someone think of this sooner? When the FTC released guidelines mandating that bloggers fully disclose all of their “material connections” with advertisers, bloggers freaked out some. It’s not that they’re all corrupt, advertiser-beholden pawns; it’s just, how do you do that exactly? Fortunately, illustrator Jeannine Schafer has come up with a witty, elegant solution: helpful icons for bloggers to disclose all of their scrilla and swag.

Facebook users logging in since last night have been greeted by an open letter from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg outlining a sweeping set of changes to the site. Regional networks are officially dead and gone, and privacy settings are getting a major shakeup. The 18,000+ comments on Zuckerberg’s note tend towards favorable, but one, somewhat unrelated question keeps popping up: where’s the dislike button?

Twitter has been declared the most popular word of 2009 meaning, I presume, that in less than 12 months the act of Twittering has gone so mainstream that even your parents know what you’re talking about. It also means that this is how a whole lot of people are getting their breaking news these days — from the collective voice of God, as it were.

The good folks at Mashable today shared the story of perhaps the most insidious marketing campaign in the history of disposable-income-having twenty-somethings: Ikea used Facebook to sucker people into buying a new Figgjo. Here’s how this evil tactic worked. A store manager uploaded a number of photos of showrooms to his Facebook account with a [...]

Today, Google plans to start changing the internet — again. The mysterious project, which launched in beta mode early this morning, was announced via YouTube in May and got “the entire web buzzing,” according to tech blog Mashable, and yet many remain in the dark about this particular “game-changer.” Here’s the skinny:

In the latest instance of cyber-bullying to hit national news, an Illinois mother is suing four teenagers on behalf of her son for creating a phony Facebook page representing his image. The complaint (embedded inside) alleges that the defendants created a fake profile with the plaintiff’s real name, pictures and cell phone number, but also included crude sexual and racist comments through status updates and profile data. Then they friended 580 people.

News reporters like to catch readers’ attention with a few zingy lines at the start of an article. Sometimes, these so-called “ledes” go horribly wrong. But sometimes, they’re great! In Today’s Best News Ledes, we highlight the cream of the crop: