Fortune's published their 50 Most Powerful Women package.
eBay's Meg Whitman tops the list, with Oprah Winfrey at #4, Viacom's Judy McGrath at #10, Time's Ann Moore at #13, Anne Sweeney from Walt Disney at #16, Cathleen Black of Hearst Magazines at #34, Susan Decker of Yahoo at #40.
Related articles on tough decisions, chucking it all, the renaissance of Martha, why senior women are MIA in hedge fund land and women's decision-making styles round out the package.
While I've definitely complained about Top 50 or Top 100 lists in the past, they're fascinating--and this one is a window into Fortune 500 companies and where (some) of the executive women sit.

The Mercury News has two stories today about Brewster Kahle, founder of the Open Content Alliance, The Internet Archive, Alexa, and WAIS. Brewster is one of the web's heros, imho, and one of the people responsible for inspiring me--back in '92--to jump into what was then the text-based Internet. The work we did together, back in the day, was fun and creative and useful--and I felt so lucky to learn from him--no one was doing anything like WAIS back in NY then.
One of the things I've always admird about Brewster is the good work he's consistently done--the other is how quietly--and effectively--he does it.
If you're not aware of the Archive--or want to learn more about the Alliance--click on the hyperlinks.

Congrats, man.

Lisa Wiliams and I are launching a new podcasting series called Beta Fridays.
Every week we will talk about our experiences test driving new software/tools--and give you some on the ground impressions.
If you have an interesting Web 2.0 or related tool or product you think we should look at, please let us know!
Beta Fridays debuts Friday, November 4th.

My friend Jay has a sideline business shooting weddings--look closely, can you tell which one he is? Yep, meet the bridez.

So the first ONA conference I've been to in 2000 years ended tonight--what was my take?
On the plus side, this organization has some very passionate people and is truly trying to be more inclusive and diverse than in the past.
On the minus side, they're operating within a reactive, fear-driven culture that--as many pointed out--doesn't reward risk and/or innovation.
Final words--I'd be happy to participate again--this group wants and needs to change from within--it would be unfair to care about online news, citizen journalism, participatory media and media, period and not want to help, if possible.

So what's the blogosphere have to say? Curiously, not much--not only does it seem as though Jeff, Rafat and I are were the only participants actively blogging--outside of a few student posts--but few outside the conference had much to say--and those who did blog were skeptical.
'
Some of the discussion:
Rafat Ali: "....at ONA, where was the passion? Where was the excitement about working in the most innovative time in the history of media? In its place what I see is self-doubt, existential crisis, a siege mentality." (Note--read the comments on this post, especially John Granatino's.)
Vin Crosbie reminds us all that every voice on the SuperPanel no longer worked in a traditional news organization--they'd all left.
Terry Heaton questions whether ONA isn't too full of people who are "scared shitless of anything they can't command and control and profoundly confused by what they view as chaos."
Jeff Jarvis: "What the ONA should be doing is inviting in all the barbarians at their gates inside to challenge them: all the bloggers and vloggers and programmers and 2.0 publishers. who are reinventing news. I don?t know why they?d bother coming but the online news machers should be begging them to."

Susan sez: Maybe it's because I work with people in the industry, but I think most of the smarter people in online news grasp the sea changes going on--my sense is that the problems are not (just) about the people, but about the profitable, hard to refocus legacy businesses called print media that publishers are loathe to abandon till the money goings straight down the drain.

Also, it's ironic to see some of the condescension now flowing the other way.

Update: Notes from a teacher, aka Mark on Media--and Mash a list

Tech guy Bill Grosso takes a hard look at the as yet unlaunched Googlebase and is less than overwhelmed. In fact, he proposes a newer--and more accurate-- metric of effort called the craig. Says Bill:
"I?m going to define a new standard measure of web-application effort called the craig. One craig is the level of effort required to produce and maintain a truly robust and scalable consumer facing web application such as Craigstlist."
And
"Here?s what my gut tells me: based on the scant information available, GoogleBase is probably clocking in at < .5 of a craig."

Want to figure out GB's ROI? More Grosso-think here.

I've been staying with my old friend B in Park Slope on some of my trips East, including this one. B and I met almost 18 years ago when we both lived in the Slope; we've remained friends through the years. B is planning to move out of the city in 2006; these plans add a special fillip to staying at her house, a house I knew as well as my own for such a long time. The house has been cleaned up for sale, with many things packed away, but it still has an ambiance I remember from long ago. It's a good feeling to revisit the house before B moves on; the park is unchanged, the procession of dog owners walking their pets to and from the park, the rows of brownstones and the leaf-swept streets leading to the train.

Moderated a panel on blogging best practices at the Online News Association conference today that had good audience commenting and interaction (Hat tip to unconference guru Dave Winer).
Best moments:

• CBS.com exec Dick Meyer in the audience and asking for advice on improving the quality--and quantity-- of commentators on The Public Eye, the (new) ombudsman blog--and getting advice from all over the room.
• Spokesmanreview producer Ryan Pitt describing how he coaches the newsroom to get into blogging.
• Lost Remote author and King TV maven Cory Bergman explaining that 10% of all staffers will get it right away--the rest need some help.
• Jeff Jarvis reminding the audience--mostly newsies--that it's about listening--and linking.

Back tomorrow --will post notes on any good stuff.

Crunch Notes: Mike Arrington launches a second blog. How many does one need before being judged truly obsessed?

Frederico Olivera deconstructs his time in Silicon Valley--and resolves to rock Portugal.
Carnival of the Mobilists: Proof that mobile is global. Neat blog. Interesting links.
Forbes to Bloggers--You Suck, Bloggers to Forbes-- Hey, here's tons of traffic back at ya. Yawn.
Wired: Erotic online games for women are, uh, hot.
ONA: NYT's Arthur Sulzberger lays out the 7 habits of highly effective journalists--and the news orgs that (for now) employ them.

Der Spiegel , biggest German newsweekly, does a deal with Technorati. Forums TK in 2006.

So Susan Mernit's Blog has s joined the Web 2.o Workgroup roster-this is a loosely affiliated group of sites focusing on aspects of Tech Crunch BBQs (oops, I meant to say aspects of Web 2.0 experience and development)--it's a super smart and opinionated crew, so I'm honored--dig in and check the blogs out.

Duncan Riley's recent stats snapshot of blogging world-wide reports as of Oct 05 says that there are 100 million blogs around the world.
Some locations and blog counts:

• Australia: approx 450,000
• Austria: approx 20,000
• Belgium: approx 100,000
• Brunei: less than 3,000
• Canada: approx 700,000
• China: 6 million and growing
• Croatia: approx 50,000
• Czech Republic: approx 10,000
• Denmark: approx 15,000
• Finland: approx 100,000
• France: approx 3.5 million
• Germany: 300,000
• Greece: less than 5,000
• India: approx 100,000
• Iran: 700,000
• Ireland: approx 75,000
• Italy: approx 250,000
• Japan: at least 5.5 million
• Malaysia: approx 20,000
• Philippines: approx 75,000
• Poland: approx 1.5 million
• Russia: approx 400,000
• South Korea: approx 20 million
• Spain: approx 1.5 million
• Ukraine: 50,000
• United Kingdom: 2.5 million
• United States: approx 30-50 million

For more info, check out the detailed view, which includes data sources.

(Via Enda Nasution)

I'm heading to NY, and will be at the Online News Associations (ONA) conference. I haven't been to one of these conferences in a few years, and I'm eager to see how it goes.

Umair gets mushy on why memorandum rocks.
Ben Metcalfe: Sky News launches a blog." Essentially, any comment is allowed, as long as it's not legally dodgy, offensive or irrelevant. And of course we'd encourage you to be as constructive, friendly and informative as possible."

Googlebase: It's official.
SEO Watch: Microsoft joins Open Content Alliance (OCA) . Go Brewster!

" The barrier to entry for creating and consuming user generated content is lowering every day. As a result, small publishers are wielding an increasing amount of power and influence. There's a warning here too: Networked conversations are growing faster and louder than anyone expected. Can corporate America really tune in and successfully keep pace? "
--Mike Manuel, Media Guerilla

"BBC is thinking of participation and collaboration as a modus operandi, a core component of how the BBC gathers and disseminates its reports. If citizen contributions are placed in the kind of blogger ghettos that we've seen ( like at MSNBC), the result is going to be pseudo-collaboration, a nod to the riff-raff and no more."
--Andrew Nachison, Director, The Media Center (via Steve Outing)

Research and social media trickster Danah Boyd's done everyone the service of posting links to some of her recent research--

• "None of this is Real: Networked Participation in Friendster" by danah boyd - currently in review (email Danah for a copy), ethnographic analysis of Friendster, Fakesters, and digital social play
• Profiles as Conversation: Networked Identity Performance on Friendster by danah boyd and Jeffrey Heer - 2006 HICSS paper on how Friendster Profiles become sites of conversation
• Vizster: Visualizing Online Social Networks by Jeffrey Heer and danah boyd - a 2005 InfoVis paper about visualizing Friendster data (including arguments about using visualization in ethnography and recognizing the value of play in visualization)
• Public Displays of Connection by Judith Donath and danah boyd - a 2004 BT Journal article on how people publicly perform their social relations
• Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networks by danah boyd - a 2004 short CHI paper staking out what Friendster is.

Some swirl around Google Base and a spare little screenshot from the GPlex via New Google Blog, Seems like this new product will take all sorts of data from everyone and organize and structure it and then present it back in Google results--in other words, who needs web servers, Craigslist, eBay, or whatever when you can use Google search tools to find whatever was added to the soup--and make Google a few pennies in ad revenue at the same time.
The mind boggles--or would that be goggles?
Here's another screenshot of a template for real estate listings.And an email from Google to Gary Price about the new service. And speculation about Google's introduction of a micropayments service at the same time.--and yet more screen shots and Terms of Service.

Wouter Schut says the following item types can be selected; Course Schedules, Events and Activities, Housing, Jobs, News and Articles, People Profiles, Products, Reference Articles, Reviews, Services, Travel, Vehicles, and Wanted Ads.

Susan sez: This is starting to feel like a chapter in a sci-fi movie call Invasion of the Killer Tools--thing is, Google's technology rocks--but their ability to dominate the market, disintermediate or remove the middleman and create new user paradigms is both amazingly great and kinda disruptively scary. Wow.

Update: AP has a story, and the WSJ too.

It just hit me--NY blogger Andrew Krucoff, a fine young snarker if there ever was one, is this generation's Toby Young--there's no other explanation for how Krucoff's pass-along of a Conde Nast memo could lead not only to his ejection from the building, but to almost simultaneous stories on Gawker, Blogcelebrity , Jossip, Gothamist, and in the New York Times. Fortunately, Krucoff is a talented writer and wit--and that's only partially true for Young (like, maybe half).

Andy Carvin, who runs the just-lost-its-funding Digital Divide Network, is in Bangladesh and sends updates from there--he's now minus camera and Treo( stolen), but still blogging and podcasting away.

Go, Andy!

Update: On a related note, the Global Voices list has some posts about the this short list of 100+ blogs in yet another contest. Check it out.

"While blogging can be about playing on a world stage to influence, gain audience, and, potentially, monetize (the same goals as most other media), there are millions of people who are happily publishing daily without those motivations. For them, it's more about expression, self-reflection, and communication."
--Ev Williams, The Odeo Blog, Podcasting for Regular People
(Via Roland Tanglao)

Reading about the San Jose Mercury's pragmatic decision to close or sell its two ethnic-language dailies, the Spanish-language Nuevo Mundo and the Vietnamese Viet Mercury, I want to just scream "move them to the web!"
My yelp would not be addressed to Knight Ridder, which has its own business issues--and plans--to manage--but to the local readers and community--who could create the means to launch local ethnic web sites--and print digital editions or broadsheets on demand, as Advance Internet did with an Indian-language broadsheet in Jersey, oh,10 years ago.
Folks, if you fear a vacuum, why not fill it?

Shanghainese artist Hu Yang has three photographic series posted online at Shanghartgallery. A documentary photographer, Yang shot 5 00 families around the city of 26 million. Straightforward, yet evocative, the photos are well worth a look.
Like Robert Frank's 1955 work The Americans, Yang's collection is both full of fascinating photos and powerful as a whole.
(Via Notes from Somewhere Bizarre and ponchorama)

"Winning on the Internet these days is all about attracting the largest and most engaged audience of computer users and converting those eyeballs into profit through advertising. The increasing amount of time people spend online has led to an enormous jump in spending, by companies large and small, on Internet advertising and commerce."
--David Vise, " AOL and Other Online Keys," Washington Post article, October 23, 2005

For those of you (like me) who are tech memorandum junkies or want to export memorandum to the world (or just propogate it on your site) Gabe's got a new widget (aka snippet of code) that will put memorandum's top links right on yer very own blog.--And if you're more handy that that, Gabe's got the code here to be hacked up.
Sample implementations-- TechCrunch and HorsePigCow.

Meaty post from Corante/Rebuilding Media's Ben Compaine saying that newspapers have been in decline for 20 years and the economics--because of cost of production--are basically screwed. Compaine writes:
"So the down sizing of today is insidious if we think that newspapers are only in a temporary down trend. If only the publishers would hold on, things will get better and they can keep staff and profit. But that's not the reality, as I noted 14 years ago.."
Compaine goes on to describe a changing market without big newspaper publishers as intermediaries brokering and distributing news.

(Susan sez: All this changes when it comes to local, doesn't it? A focused local site, like the new Buffalo Rising, can take a good run at packaging content for both a psychographic and a demographic slice of a local market--witness, for example, the brilliant example of Jon Webber's New West, a web property that may add print.)

More stats, courtesy of Internet Retailer-- In September, Procter & Gamble had (aka bought) the most online ad impressions in the consumer goods industry, according to Nielsen's AdRelevance Report. Leading companies and their number of impressions (in millions) are:

• The Procter & Gamble Company 436.0
• The New York Times Company 393.3
• General Mills, Inc. 298.5
• Hydroderm Beverly Hills 251.8
• Nestle USA, Inc. 229.5
• Cadbury Schweppes 195.7
• L`Oreal SA 152.0
• PepsiCo, Inc. 145.6
• Energizer Holdings, Inc. 123.0
• Busted Tees 100.5

Does anyone have stats on what these big budget advertisers are currently spending on SEO? And growth in the spend over the past two years? How about targeted social media (aka blogs)? My guess is that (ad)measurement and reporting for blogging is not quite clean enough for these guys, yet, but I bet they are ready to take a hard look as audience attention continues to shift.

In anticipation of the imminent kick-off of the (winter) holiday shopping season, a quick look at mainstream shopping sites and September 2005 growth stats. Big winners in the growth game in September were:

• Target--15.9 million visitors--up 81% from Sept. 2004
• Overstock.com--12.1 million visitors--up 60% from Sept. 2004
• Ticketmaster--11.1 million visitors--up 50% from Sept. 2004
• Wal-Mart--15.6 million visitors--up 39% from Sept. 2004
• Dell--15.6 million visitors--up 60% from Sept. 2004
• Amazon--35.5 million visitors--up 19% from Sept. 2004
• eBay--52.9 million visitors--up 17% from Sept. 2004
• ShoppingNetwork.com--14.8million visitors--up 3% from Sept. 2004

Two of the top 10 shopping sites lost audience-- Yahoo Shopping went down 30% to 11.1 million from 15.8 million, and Expedia went down 8% to 14.5

Susan sez: If you take Dell and Ticketmaster off this list as very narrow plays, the growth at Target and Walmart become notable when compared to the huge(but naturally slow-growing) Amazon and eBay. It would be very interesting to know what execs at these companies thought led to the higher growth rates--and to see how they all do over the Christmas selling season----which seems to be starting this week--has anyone else noticed the Christmas shops opening beside the Halloween outlets?

(Via Internet Retailer)

Offering yet more evidence that Yahoo is serious about building a senior-level content biz dream team, Yahoo has hired Deanna Brown as general manager of Yahoo Health. A former VP at AOL, Brown was cofounder of Breathe Media, where she was CEO and publisher. Earlier, she served as publisher at Epicurious.com.
(via paid content)

Susan sez: Look for some interesting musical chairs in NY and Dulles as an outgrowth of this hire...Brown is smart.

"In the end, the price that anyone can provide for voice transmission on the 'Net will trend toward zero."
--Meg Whitman, explaining the eBay's purchase of Skype opens the door for ad-supported telephony.
(Via Reuters)

"Third-quarter net income rose to $381.2 million, or $1.32 a share, from $52 million, or 19 cents, a year earlier, Mountain View, California-based Googl e said today in a statement. Net revenue doubled to $1.05 billion, topping the $944 million average estimate in a Thomson Financial analyst survey.

Google users are growing at about twice the pace of Yahoo! Inc., as the company expands beyond Web searching.... Google handled 56 percent of global Web queries in August, compared with Yahoo's 21 percent and Microsoft's 11 percent, according to Reston, Virginia-based ComScore Networks Inc., which tracks Web use."

Via Bloomberg:

The Start Up Exchange: Resource central, hosted by SocialTextt
Liza Sabater talks about the Asian American Journalist Association's Executive Leadership Program in Aspen, Co...Wish I'd been there.
Charlene Li: How AOL's assets fit the portals and why MSN is the best potential investor.

Smart Mobs: S warmSketch..Fascinating collaborative art tool. Check out the image build.
Ed V: Maira Kalman's illustrated The Elements of Style--gift book alert!

A TechCrunch BBQ meetup!
Want to make a stir in the Valley? Be really smart, write a great blog, get a big house and have some wireless BBQs--that's the TechCrunch way and it is kicking some bubble butt.

I respect the way Keith and Mike have used a combo of charm and guerilla marketing techniques to make their Atherton rental the magic bus of the latest bubblet..if I was back in the Valley tomorrow night, their * sold out* meet up would have me right there passing the grilled tofu(okay, the ribs.)
A Winer keynote, emerging tech start-ups fronting for filet and booze, a ball-seeking dog, 100+ geeks--what could be bad?

After way too many weeks of talking head conferences, I wish I was there...Hopefully, November...

The always interesting Mark Pincus, founder of Tribe.net, muses on What Rupert (Murdoch) should do online, and in musing about why NewsCorp should buy Craigslist, comes up with some good advice all local newspapers(and aren't all newspapers local?) should follow:

• go after the business opportunity of community classifieds.
• use newspapers to drive my online classifieds business.
• offer free liners (that's the small text classifieds that use weird acronyms and are unreadable anyway) as an incentive to post online - ie. you get free newspaper placement for giving us the gift of your free online listing. maybe you can charge $5 but doesnt really matter.
• go for all color print classifieds for cars and housing.
• use branded local papers to drive community.
• transform papers to an about.com model where most editorial/writing staff are part timers and a lot of content is coming from other sources.
• turn ad people into reps for local media, both offline and online.

Mark's got more ideas here--if I was GM of a local news site, I'd read the whole thing and implement some of his ideas.

(Via Buzzmachine)

"I believe the most important critical uncertainty today is whether location-based media will develop as an open system like the Internet, where everybody will be free to associate a review, a photo, a video, a map, a work of art, a political polemic, a database, with specific locations ? or whether information associated with places will be a closed system where only those who buy a certain brand of proprietary software or only those who own the local franchise will have the right to write geodata to the readers almost everybody uses. Will entire populations of city-dwellers create, use, and exchange information and media associated with geographic locations? Or will the right to write or access restaurant reviews, geospecific photographs, neighborhood crime stats be constrained?"
--Howard Rheinfold, Urban Infomatics Breakout
(Via thesis tracker)

Anil Dash has a smart post on how selling to a big brand today is different than trying to go IPO five years ago: "Some folks are bootstrapping their services and some are taking angel funding (that means a rich friend of the company gives you money). So, instead of being pushed to do a huge IPO with a huge return, a lot of these people are more than happy to be acquired rather than shoot for a ridiculously huge IPO. "

In other words, realistic expectations=survival tactics=acquisition targets.

Best phrase: "Yahoo bought everyone on my buddy list, and all I got was this t-shirt".

Update: TechDirt: Build to flip as your resume?