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Has TED organizer Chris Anderson lost his senses? He has invited Digg founder Kevin Rose to TED 2009 — an honor Rose announced on Twitter in hackerspeak. (If you're a regular TED attendee, you may not know that "woot" is an exclamation of excitement; spelling it with numbers is supposed to make it more impressive.) With the arrival of Rose and teenage wantrepreneur Jessica Mah, more TED oldtimers are sure to flee the annual Valley-meets-Hollywood schmoozefest.

Who wants to hang around with a guy best known for drinking beer on camera while discussing tech news, and a 17-year-old whose chosen profession is talking about startups and going to conferences? For all its tiresome, self-congratulatory puffery, TED at least offered tech veterans a respite from the Web 2.0 cool-kids crowd. Next year, we won't have to bother publishing TED's attendee list: We'll just copy it straight from the list of top Twitter users, as Anderson seems to be doing.