Susan Mernit's Blog

Quotes from personal bloggers related to my Gnomedex talk--

Figleaf: "As you know, one of my on-going themes is that the average sex blogger doesn't do anything the average non-sex/non-blogger does except admit it. One of the huge benefits of sex blogging, especially anonymous sex blogging, is that we learn from each other that we're not the only ones."

Magadalena: "I have absolutely no idea how many sexual blogs there are or what percentage of the 40.1 million sites Technorati currently tracks dedicate themselves to sexual content, but I would think it's pretty high."

Bliatz: "I wish I had the courage to turn this blog into my main outlet. I wish I had the guts to just write everything here, expose the whole picture and expose it all to everybody. I wish I didn't feel I had to hide something as natural and straight-forward as my sexuality and all the thoughts and emotions connected to that."

Evil Minx, commenting:"It's the loss of freedom that gets me also. The sheer uninhibited joy of being able to write as the person behind my eyes is what has kept me going over the last year. "


Some of the blogs, videobloggers, web sites and podcasters I may reference:
(Note: Some of these blogs contain adult language and are meant for over 18 years, proceed accordingly)

Real writers, cloaked identities
Unfurling My Sexuality --divorced and searching
Jefferson, One Life, Take Two --pervert and parent
Viviane--Viviane's Sex Carnival --bright and sexy
Freya-- Freya's House of Dreams --erotic wife
Always Aroused Girl- -erotic wife 2
Figleaf-- Real Adult Sex --wise guy
Rent Boy-- MonMouth --sex adventures
Bliatz --sex and identity
Girl with a one track mind--bright and searching
Erotica Lee 1--Memoir of a prostituted child, now adult
Coming Out at 48 --long married, coming into new life

Open for viewing(and making money from it...)
Violet Blue-- tiny nibbles
Adacia Ray-- Waking Vixen
Susie Bright-- Susie Bright's Journal
Bridgett Harrison -Ropelover Journal

Podcasters:
Polyamory Weekly; Notes
Violet Blue-Open Source Sex

Outed/Hacked & related (examples)
Magdalena-Delta of Venus
Mamalicious

Brand new blog, with issues
In My DNA

"The publicity of an online journal is like a kind of shield. I like to say that publicity is the new privacy. However, anonymity isn't guaranteed."
And
"The way a person's blog interacts with a person's life is a work in progress."

--Shakes, commenting at Delta of Venus about the freedom offered by writing anonymously.

My first Gnomedex, and a night of mega-schmoozing. I don't get out that much so these big tribal tech events like reunions--with the benefit of new people to discover as well. I'll skip the big lists and just say that it was great to be there tonight.

gnomedex

Walked down to the Pike Street Public Market from 4th Avenue, amazed at how different this part of Seattle feels from San Francisco--or Vancouver.

First of all, mega street people everywhere; secondly, way more alt-style on the passersby--scrag beards, soupstrainers, mohawks, shaved sides among the hair de choice for men, women very outdoorsy or alternative in that their hair flows long and loose (in a way that seems somewhere between earth goddess and farm girl in my book) and the shoes are all sandally.

And the coffee shops--more Starbucks, lotsa Tullys, mucho indie shops--one would expect the bio-fuel of choice in this town to be French Roast.

(And yes, the market was fun...the cherries are in season, and there's Dungess crab sandwiches, and bad street musicians, and what's not to like?)

You fly to Seattle for Gnomedex, the city looks glorious, and the first thing you do is check into your hotel room and go online.
Yep, that's me--geekazoid.

I'm going to be talking about sex and relationships at Gnomedex this year--specifically about the bloggers, vbloggers, podcasters and photographers who are using Web 2.0 tools to give voice to their longings and experiences with a vitality unmatched since the Victorian era-- and the communities forming around these topics.
This isn't a talk about porn, though much of this work is erotic; it's a talk about how digital identities (masked and cloaked in many cases) have enabled regular people--many of them geeks--to build a frank and authentic shadow world focused on free expression, sharing, and sexual celebration--and to connect with one another.
Some of the questions that interest me on a high level:
--How do we think about personal stories, erotica and porn in the framework of participatory media?
--Who is writing and creating in this realm and what motivates them?
--Given the huge business of porn online, where do these creators fit into the hierarchy?

On a personal level, and as a blogger, I also want to talk about this set of questions:
--How do we all interact with and experience bloggers whose sexually frank or personally honest blogs defy standard norms of *polite* society?
--What are we comfortable exposing about ourselves--and what do we keep back or cloak?
--Is authenticity different when sex is involved?
--Outing: Many sex-positive bloggers have been outed; hacked, attacked--what does this say about cyber standards and our digital communities?

This will be a discussion, not a lecture; I'm eager both to share thoughts and stories and to hear from conference attendees about their thoughts on authentic voice, personal sexuality online, privacy and toolsets that make it all possible.

Feel free to post comments/ideas/links here--looking forward to seeing you all at Gnomedex.

I am still trying to explain why widgets and their ilk matter, and this column by Dion, tho it quotes me, actually does a good job explaining the whole widget value concept a bit more, (and has a lovely illustration, to boot.)
Dion writes: "...widgets, in the form of easily added functionality to a Web page, are growing in popularity, as well as feeds that are plugged into them."
More here.

One of my favorite sites, Smart Mobs, has redesigned. The designer writes: ""Boris-flavored mash-up of Khoi Vinh and 'Web 2.0-ish' styles"--and it looks great! Cleaner, way more modular and very neat.

"...Now you're starting to understand the basic principle of Web 3.0: Anti-Social Software. We don't need systems to invite us to Social Networks, we need Anti-Social Network software to make all those people leave us alone."

--Commentator Charles, posting on Jeremy Zawodny's blog in response to a post noting the launch of FOAF identity management site PeopleAggregator and commenting on the walled-garden, can't get data out effect of most social network sites.

"'I'm a senior vice-president, which is a pretty high title in this company; there's only one title, EVP, that's higher, and then after that you're the president of a division. I have absolute access. I went to dinner with Jon Miller the other night in L.A., and I hang out with Leonsis, I go to Wizards games with him. [Leonsis owns the Washington Wizards.] So I'm pretty high up.'"

--AOL VP and Netscape lead Jason Calcanis, in a recent NY Magazine story, explaining his role in AOL post Weblogs Inc acquisition; I understand Tina Sharkey (Mrs. Seth Goldstein) is his boss.

Bonus quote, same story: "If I'd landed at Yahoo, I'd be hanging out with [Del.icio.us founder] Josh Schachter and [Flickr founder] Caterina Fake, debating the finer points of this stuff. But at AOL, I'm probably the most knowledgeable person on this area, so they really needed my help."

(Susan's disclosure: I am a former AOL VP who now believes it's likely that being flavor of the minute at AOL has more impact than any title and that almost everyone in a senior role gets shoved sideways eventually--the best reason to be glad Jason has mad money for an exit. )

Buzzmachine: BBC makes editors weblog public--think transparency in news planning
Beth Kanter: Techsoup and Second Life, working together
Popsugar is growing...check out girly social network Team Sugar (thanks, Kevin Burton)
Rachael Kramer Bussel: The cupcake bloggers make NBC news (congrats Nichelle!)

Yahoo's Bradley Horowitz's announced the news he's leading a whole bevvy of product groups inside the CPO (Chief Product Officer) organization.

Bradley also names the (new) senior members and org of his team:
Yahoo! Developer Network - led by Chad Dickerson
Technology Development Group - led by Caterina Fake
Advanced Products Group - led by Scott Gatz
Yahoo Research Berkeley - led by Ellen Salisbury
Product Practices Group - led by Irene Au
Y! Agile Process Group - led by Gabby Benefield

Over at Personals, we have been working with many of these teams, tapping into the smarts, and hope to do much more--Yahoo is working to embrace and support product innovation, they're hungry for it, and this is all to the good for our business, so folks, bring it on.

"What if you wanted to integrate your MySpace, Yahoo and MingleNow (if it makes the cut) relationships and data. Where are the standards that make your personal networks portable? Where are the import/export buttons? "
--Dan Farber, reflecting on how social networks are the next big thing--and roach motels.

Post, BC, Peter Caputa defines unconference for the rest of us word benders...Some of it is funny.

"Big companies (are) not willing to commit until there is wider adoption, and applications won't work without more data to work from. This is our big egg we are putting out. I hope it's an arms race?and that tomorrow Google, Microsoft, eBay and AOL come along?everybody benefits. The quicker it spreads, the quicker the tools will be available."

--Yahoo's Andy Baio, Upcoming founder, speaking at Supernova about microformats, open standard for structuring--and embedding-- Web content, such as contact information, events and product reviews --and the committment Yahoo is making to using them. (via Dan Farber)

Rafat Ali's PaidContent (and sister sisters) is the latest digital media play to get VC dollars--in this case, under $1MM in an angel round from investor Allan Patricof and Greycroft Partners (don't you love how East Coast VC names invoke Britisms, and West Coast evoke trees).

Newly minted Greycroft kicked off in March; their funding will enable Paid Content and related properties to staff up and get some infrastructure going (does that mean more computers and a better hosting package?)

Rafat writes: "... Alan's team approached me in January, and when I met him in New York later that month, within 20 minutes of us talking, he instinctively got it-- the issues, the challenges, the opportunities."

Susan sez: Rafat has long been a blogging inspiration to me, and over the years, has become a valued friend...Given how many content plays are now getting VC dollars that tide has clearly turned, so rising interest in PC is no surprise. Rafat however, has been careful--and eager to retain control--from the beginning, so this is a testament to a cautious entrepreneur's optimism about their funding source.

Congrats, folks!

And one more thing--This is a good moment to say how great it is--and how much I learn--from being a part of the social media/emerging technology/ user-focused kieretsu. So many good people, so much passion and ideas.

Lisa Williams has been here for the weekend, and our friendship is a great example of how technology tools (from the telephone to blogging) just help reinforce--and support-- a friendship with someone who lives 3,000 miles away.

Lisa is a rockstar, and it's been great to spend more time with her (once more).At dinner last night, Lisa & I got to hang with a super-smart crew of disruptive folks (you know who you are), tell way back stories, and think about how to change the world with cool tools while eating pretty decent Chinese food--then go home and talk for hours.After too many years of crossing the country for one dotbomb or another, my sense of place--and affinity with some alternative Bay area creative geekery--is coming on strong, and it feels damn good.

Update: Blogger chewed up this post, ugh!

First of all, there are alot of cool photos floating around--this community likes to document.
Beyond that, how did I feel about devoting a larger part of my free time (and some of my work week) to Bloggercon IV?
Good, mostly. In fact, very, very good.
Some observations:

• Bloggercon has succeeded in becoming not only an unconference, but truly non-commercial. That makes the audience fairly self-selecting(basically impassioned disciples --and compadres--of Dave Winer and avid bloggers of (mostly) the tech persuasion), plus the BlogerHer and Gnomdexers Dave very wisely reached out to this year.
• As an unconference, it's about the people, and there were marvelous people there--and a chance to talk and mix that was friendly, supportive and pretty satisfying.
• New people I really, really enjoyed--and hope to get to know better included the vloggercon crew--Ryanne, Scholomo and jay( who Lisa Williams points out was at Julie Leung's Emotional Life session at BC3), Obidiah Greenberg, who does cool stuff at UC Berkeley, as well as Terry Heaton, Shannon Clark and Chris Heur/Kristy Wells.
• Eloquent and interesting usual suspects who had smart things to say-both onstage and off-- included(in no particular order), Ponzi, Lisa Williams, Elisa Camahort, Dan Farber, Jory des Jardins, Lisa Stone, Maria Niles, Rex Hammock, Scott Johnson, Mike Arrington(who did a great job with a tough topic!--Core Values), Jay Rosen(another outstanding presenter), Roland Tanglao, Liz Henry, Frank Paynter, Dan Gillmor, Bob Cox, Mary Hodder, and too many others to mention(yep, most people talked.)
• Quieter, but listening hard: Richard MacManus, Gabe Rivera .
• Presiding forces: Doc Searls, Dave Winer,--with intermittent peanut gallery support(and songs) from the irrepressible(and soon to launch) Marc Canter.

Via Rex: "Bloggercon Flickr'd: As of 7:45 a.m. (pdt) there are 668 photos on Flickr tagged bloggercon and 311 tagged bloggerconiv and here's Flickr's bloggercon "cluster."

Had lunch with a group of people who had diverse views about the sessions this morning (bloggerconIV): some folks very angrily challenged the (un)conference and felt the format lacked value; others felt this was way so much better than what has come before.
The best part of the discussion though, was when we started to explore how many conferences (un, or not) are actually the gathering points for affinity, for tribes if you will, more than annual episodes for vendors and clients. BlogHer, Gnomedex, Bloggercon and perhaps the very new vloggercon all fit this model--one that assumes there is a persistent, engaged community that continues outside and independently of the actual event. This is an idea that seems extremely relevant to me--a post-Burning Man vision of conferences as tribal gatherings and flashpoints for ongoing action. (Note ,this is a profoundly non commercial vision, I know that), but isn't the point here that high-end commercial conferences are delivering value to ever-smaller groups of people?

So think of Bloggercon--and its ilk--as a gathering of the tribe--a series of loosely joined communities than enable people to share power and learn from one another...and then question whether that characterization holds true--And what, if we wanted it to become true--would need to shift to make it so.

Dave says Jay Rosen is the only person who's been to all of them...I think I've been to three of the four.
This Bloggercon is going great for me; it feels more like a big meeting/discussion than a conference, with very knowledgeable people in the room with a slightly ore diverse set of perspectives than I might have expected--the tech folks, the citizen journalists, and a sprinkling of mommy-bloggers, non-profit identified bloggers and some (very welcome) newbies.
What worked in Day 1? Phil Torrone's passionate discussion of making stuff; Jay Rosen's wonderfully focused discussion on citizen journalism and powering up from the grassroots; the tail end of Lisa William's Emotional Life discussion (confession: I missed most of it); the lively hallway and dinner-time discussions among knots of people overjoyed to connect.
Some of the sharpest hot shots aren't here and many of the most venture-driven tech entrepreneurs are missing, so the hype factor seems low (compared to a Web 2.0 conference, for example....I bet Supernova is sucking off some people on that side..and BarCamp on the other)

What's been coolest for me in the past 24 is the reinforcing of the sense of community here..Yes, it's fragile and fragmented and sometimes contentious, but it is real and consistent and most importantly, consistent--or maybe persistent.

Tags: bloggerconiv, bloggercon,

Brian Kalsey: To make your (industry) blog successful, write about everyone in the business.
CNET: Newspapers and bloggers---still uneasy(the papers, that is).
Journalism UK: Build an online TV service, triple your page views (The Times's plan, that is.)
Kottke on SixApart beta blog tool Vox's question of the day (love it!)

It's almost bibical.
Feeds(RSS) begat outliners(OPML)
Outliners begat tags
Tags began microformats
Microformats begat APIs
APIs begat widgets
Widgets begat start-ups
And the great mash up settled over the land.

Serial start-up mavens Scott Rafer and Oren Michaels have a new start-up named Mashery (guess what they do?)
Richard MacManus has a long post today on widgets. Richard writes: "I too have been tracking the growing importance of widgets, especially as it relates to the Personalized Start Pages space - Microsoft Live gadgets, Google's modules, Netvibes and Pageflakes, and of course Yahoo's konfabulator (although not yet integrated in a big way into MyYahoo)." and " Nowadays it's all about The Two-Way Web App! You can interact and 'write' to any number of small web services-driven apps."
And Yahoo, of course, is supporting microformats, as the local/maps team points out.

Susan sez: Widgets could be flavor of the moment, but the ways that some widgets intersect with structured data (as opposed to intersecting with flashy, AJAX DHTML fancy effects) is one of the things I find compelling (Yes, I am fascinated by microformats, in particular).

For those less geeky than I am clearly becoming, what's the deal here? And why should you care?

Well, for one thing, widgets (and microformats) offer the opportunity for users-and small business people, among others--to embed applications and dynamic apps into their pages/sites. If you hang around myspace, you see videoplayer widgets(think youtube), slideshow players (rockyou) that have been cut and pasted in by users --and swickis, a eurekster product I worked on--are everywhere. So if you have content or tools, wouldn't you want users to be able to export them? And if you have APIs, don't you want people to build widgets with them--and then distribute those?

Viz, bibical.

I'm really looking forward to Bloggercon this weekend, and to Gnomedex end of next week. And maybe a little BarCamp. I've been busy at work, head down, thinking about personals, social media, structured data, free text, communities, and just about every other possible element of a relationship-focused service and then trying to get the roadmaps and production schedules set for our products--stepping back for a couple days to actually listen to people from outside my usual circles talk about their passionate ideas will be a complete pleasure (yes, I am feeling the echo chamber a little these days...)
So, if you are around and would like to meet up, please get in touch! (And I mean everyone, whether you're local or not...I am definitely not getting out enough...)

Update: Did you know it's San Francisco Geek Week? yeah!

"It's unrealistic to say, but -- imagine our entire U.S. workforce deployed in units of 20. Each unit of 20 is running a business that tens of millions of people are getting enormous amounts of value out of each month. What kind of world would that be?"
--Jim Buckmaster,Craigslist CEO, talking to a bemused Wall Street Journal reporter

"Who among the harried professional class does not breathe a secret sigh of relief when drinks with an old friend, lunch with a potential client or a Saturday dinner party with college classmates falls through? Driven by 12-hour workdays, never-ending networking "opportunities," work that follows us home on the Internet and the Treo, not to mention weekends crammed with kids' play dates and dinner parties, many people are admitting that one of modern life's most underappreciated joys is to be dropped by others, at least occasionally and when done in the right spirit. "

--Alex Williams, writing in the Sunday NY Times,

Leonard Lin, another Yahoo, has a cool post on What will be essential in 2011?
Some picks by Leonard:

• Social networking and media sharing services integrated at the OS level and prepackaged with hardware.
  
• Global digital identity / reputation / relationship systems
  
• Digital media everywhere
  
• phones as the primary convergence device in 5 years
• RFID
  
• Self Monitoring Nike+ is just the start of a whole wave of self-instrumentation
  
• Personal Aggregators a new generation of systems that will try to help you manage
  
• Shared everything - a social-everything model

Great list, Len...I'll respond with my own list later today.

Fred Stutzman: 5 social networking sites NOT to miss-- Cyworld, Bebo, Hi5. Faceparty, XuQa.
Valleywag: Netscape relaunches yet again; this time it's a Diggler.
SiliconBeat: Photo site Riya's vision grows to encompass visual search
Backfence: Palo Alto local site launches.

As PubSub winds down, the finger-pointing by one of the founders intensifies--and the victim of a very public campaign of smearing and innuendo is the other co-founder, Salim Ismail. I just read CTO Bob Wyman's comments about the sorry state PubSub has come to--and his explanation of the cause, and am shocked at his publishing this.

I've known both Bob and Salim for some years now, and have become good friends with Salim over time and have found him to be a consistently honorable and engaging person. I also think this outburst says more about Bob Wyman's need to get a grip than anything else. Given the very public tantrum Bob's posted, I would suspect anyone who wanted the PubSub IP would want an iron-clad guarantee that Bob was safely out of the picture as assurance this kind of public smearing would not happen to them down the road.

It's not only Brazilians who populate Orkut--loyal Googlers show up there too--as the 15+ person list at The Google Connection (complete with screen grabs) demonstrates. This is a fun post with lots of rich techies to gawk at.

(Some data also from Google OS blog via Dimitar Vesselinov)

Another milestone to mark is the 4th year anniversary of the still news-worthy after all these years Paid Content, Rafat Ali's cornerstone digital media site.
Rafat is a good friend and a blogger/business person who has impressed me over the years; I admire his smarts, his passion, and his drive--as well as all the great scoops he breaks.
Rafat recalls: "It was a hot and muggy summer in NYC, and not sure what I was thinking. Well, there was some thought to it: to raise my profile as journalist and get a job at WSJ or CNET News.com."
Well, Rafat's got an empire now....and one well worth a daily read.

Forget small technology start-ups--finally VCs are willing to fork their money over to high-class tech bloggers, the new branded media moguls.

Now, right on the heels of TechCrunch turning 1, ValleyWag reports that Om Malik has left the virtual Biz 2.0 building for his own happy yurt, one filled with cash from True Ventures.
Steve Rubel advises Om--sell research! Rafat Ali sends kisses. Matt Ingram marvels.

Don't you love the idea of solo bloggers/editors/writers becoming as powerful--and perhaps as successful--as those screen writer turned director types?

Wow-Just read the NYTimes Modern Love essay on Love Addiction--a young woman who got so strung out on her relationship she left school and contemplated suicide.
One quote: "...our relationship, however damaging, was my life, and if it were to end, I didn't see how I could continue to exist."
And another:
"But my going to treatment to try to make our relationship work was like an alcoholic's checking herself in so that she could learn how to drink. I couldn't see that the solution wasn't learning how to live with Matt but learning how to live without him."
And
"SIX years and three relationships later, I am still coming to terms with this experience."

Great essay.

More congrats to the wonderfuly energetic and open Robert Scoble, who leaves Microsoft for just one year old PodTech --congrats to John Furrier on this--and everything, as well). Scoble is a force of nature it will be great to have in the Bay area--this is the coup the blogosphere boys can't stop obsessing over and it's good news.

"... the opportunities are out there to make significant money on the Web, which is - let's face it - driving a lot of this 'web 2.0' mania. Oh it's a bubble, for sure. But it's funny that this page views model is at its foundation almost identical to the Dot Com days (bubble 1.0). Drive as many users to your site as humanly possible - that's the modus operandi of all websites, web 2.0 or not. The main difference I can see is that in the dot com days, this rush for page views was a 'land grab' and there wasn't as big an opportunity to monetize it with advertising. The idea back then (late 90's, early 21st century) was to gather as many users as possible and then do an IPO - monetizing would presumably come later. Which actually has worked out to be the case for the survivers (Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, etc).

These days, 2005-06-onwards, the idea is very much to - you guessed it - gather as many users as possible. Only this time you can monetize them with Google ads, or your own advertisers/sponsors."

Richard MacManus, writing on how the bubble is back, along with serious $$--this time for successful bloggers--call that addictively successful and compelling bloggers.

Bonus: Richard is coming to Silicon Valley later this week for another visit--he rocks! Look for him at gnomedex, bloggercon, etc.

Mike Arrington's TechCrunch blog started one year ago today (okay, yesterday), so congrats are in order. Think about the fact Mike had just moved to the Valley a little more than a year ago, and now his blog (according to Mike) has around 65,000 RSS and email subscribers via Feedburner, and serves serves 2-3 million page views per month. Back in month 5, Mike said: "TechCrunch is a hobby that has grown to an obsession.." --and now one could say grown to a business, and maybe even an empire.
Congrats, big guy.

"...see, it's my tags, it's tags that are pulling me into discussions about tech and web 2.0 and blogging by these SAME people, droning echoes between my ears as they yammer on and on about the same old same crap, their cadence annoys me; it's as regular as clockwork. They are driving me to distraction with their predictability and vanilla-ness.
(snip)
....I think maybe the real me is nearly ready to EXPLODE with A PERSONAL invitation to the melonheads littering the Internet with the remains of their circle-jerk wackoffs to take their playthings and head to another sandbox."

from ALLIED by Jeneane Sessum: Really?. explaining why sometimes Web 2.0 talk is just old time blather

Spent very little time online this week and a lot with friends. walking, talking, drinking, and yes, working. Jumping back into the work week tomorrow am, and the blogosphere as well.

Pete Cashmore writes about DatingAnyone.com, a free service that lets you track whether the "single" or "taken" status of friends on myspace has changed (he also notes SingleStats).
Associated Press: iPods are cooler than beer--and Facebook is in the top three cool things for college students in a recent survey.
Washington Post: Online dating= fraud risks for searchers, says WaPo reporter.

Chris Tolles has a post today about Topix's recently outed free classifieds network,who empowers local users to post for sale items in the Topix network. The adss are free and featured on local news papers (they have 30,000 of those)--and they'remonetized by one of the best usages of Google Ad Words on the planet.

Chris says: "The key to making this work, as Jeff Jarvis rather tartly points out, is a lot of local traffic. With over 7M unique visitors, spread out pretty evenly geographically, we are getting great pickup. We're getting great traction on our forums -- 8,000 posts a day, with real diversity (not just the Web 2.0 crowd). The new Topix classified ad system is growing at a similar pace."

Susan says: As GoogleBase rolls on, other option become pretty interesting--not as ways to beat newspapers (Craig did that), but as vast aggregated distributors of structued data AND tagged content. Put Technorati, edgeio and others into the soup and wonder who the next leader in combining structured data and free text tagging might be--and what kind of classifieds system triumph that could lead to.

"...Google needs to embrace the possibility of failure. They need to stop making all of the same mistakes Microsoft made. They need to build aggressive and visionary products, kill stuff that doesn?t work, muzzle their out-of-control communications team and start telling us what Google 2.0 is going to be. "

--Tecvh Cruncher Mike Arrington, on how Google is afraid to fail (and keeps releasing products less amazing than core search)

(Also see Om Malik, Is Google Wasting Its Genius Cycles ? and Paul Kedrosky, Google is beginning to bug me)

"...Someday that teen in her bedroom will be director of marketing at Nike, but for now, she's editing a video for YouTube and Photoshoping her friend's head onto George W's body to include in her blog. It's a slow process. But that same teen is also voting with her mouse clicks on what will live on the Web, and what will die. "

--Anastasia Goodstein, YPulse

danah boyd's writings on myspace and identity take on new resonance after reading writer/performer Josh Kornbluth's account of how his identity was stolen on myspace and he couldn't get out of customer service hell.
Josh writes: "On Saturday afternoon, Michael Isip called me again. There was now another ?profile? on MySpace, again purporting to be me and again containing disgusting materials. And a whole bunch of my colleagues at KQED had received two additional emails, purportedly from two new people, expressing chagrin that KQED would be harboring such a nefarious person as myself on its payroll." He tells the story of getting lost in customer service, having no one be responsive to him, and getting in trouble at work. And then....

Read on for what is even a higher level of Dell Hell.
(Via Scott Rosenberg)

My friend Dan Pacheo's announcing today that he's launch a new company--Participata--to sell, create and install community and social media tools, based on the code he and his team created for Bakotopia and other Bakersfield, CA newspaper sites owned by The Californian.
The case studies are clear and well laid out and Dan and team have a history of getting things done--and innovating in an accessible way, so this is good news for everyone looking to make the development process a little easier and more open--And another feather in the cap of The Californian for finding an innovative way to capitalize on their investment--sure beats talking about doing an IPO!

Susan sez: Oh, and they are hiring a Denver-based product manager, Link here.

"Much like corporations leveraged Internet 1.0 by creating digital storefronts and giving rise to ecommerce, people around the world are now learning how to leverage the incredible power inherent in the URL to create what is essentially a parallel universe of digital identities. And just like all things Internet, digital identities are not subject to the boundaries of geography, or the laws of physics, or any of the other limitations of being a carbon-based life-form. As such, the extensibility and scale of the ?digital you? is far-reaching, as are the strategic implications to the media industry. In many ways, the art-form of self-expression has become the ?new media?, and social networks are their distribution channels."
--Robert Young, writing at GigaOm, Om Malik's blog about social networks as the new media

Jeremy Zwadony's got an inspiring post about his diet and 50-lb. weight loss over the past year, with links to some interesting places--Calorie King, The Hacker's Diet, and Jeff Sandquists blog.
The Hacker's Diet is a trip, with neat geeky descriptions, tips on watching portions, etc. and Jeremy credits it with his own diet success.
One of the cool things about J's post--and the comments on it--is how much the voices here are guys commenting on weight loss, diet, and health--a refreshing change from what I usually read in women's magazines--much more matter of fact and analytical. I;'ll be checking in to read the 'how I made this work for me' posts over the coming week.

Frank Barnako: glam.com taking web ad placements for Hearst Magazine Group. Take that, iVillage. The founder says " ...we had the brand. We had the advertisers. We had a voice, and we had the editorial appearance that everyone aspired to."
Tom Foremski hits the 2 year blogging blanniversary--congrats! "...in the last month, I had run out of money to pay my rent, and I had zero money for my family support payments."
Phil Windley wakes up to the sometimes uneasy alliance between journalists and bloggers.
Tim Porter: How do newspaper companies acquire the tools to change? (Susan sez: Now that the future is falling on them.)