"There should be people who are willing to provide personal support to others who are ostracized this way -- and that support should be available regardless of gender, age, or other circumstances. I won't support anything that only offers support to women and not men, we must help unpopular people, even people who we think are mean. It's no crime to be unpopular, and you can measure our humanity by how good we are to people we don't like. "

--Dave Winer, writing about the Kathy Sierra incident and stopping cyberbullying.

Susan sez: Dave's instances of speaking his mind AND getting it right seem to be going up almost daily and this is a wonderful and true post.

"Spring is here and the restaurants will soon be filled with anxious and hopeful couples, ordering wine, dusting off their most luminous lies, thinking they might finally have found love. Then they will see their dates' homes for the first time."

---Joyce Wadler, writing about dating in the NY Times, in an article that reminds us that spring l ove, like spring lamb, comes into season right about now.

I got an email from a friend who spent this evening on one of NYC's top restaurants. He said "I was seated near some people from Google and AOL who were celebrating some sort of deal. They'd signed papers and wanted to sit off by themselves so no one could hear them talk."

Does this mean some unit of the Google team did a rich ad buy deal with AOL? Or does it mean Google is topping off its rash of recent purchases with the acquisition of AOL?

Wouldn't that be a hoot--the big portal that in 2000 didn't want to buy Google and in 2002 invested $10 million dollars in them to hold Yahoo at bay--and then made mega cash from the Google IPO--being acquired by Google?

I admit, this story is definitely in the category of suspect rumor--but what if it is true?

"We are under the impression that we have this brain that can do more than it often can,”

--René Marois, neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, quoted in a fascinating NYTimes piece about how multi-taskers max out their brains, creating neural network bottlenecks and causing confusion and mistakes.

(Susan sez: The article basically urgers readers to not drive and talk on the phone, or not to read, watch TV, blog and talk on the phone at the same time as they eat dinner--how many of you engage in one of these two behaviors somewhat regularly?)

It was one thing to see Kathy Sierra's moving post about feeling threatened and at risk online; another to find out people I know and like were linked by her to these activities.

Blogher's Lisa Stone has a strong post that both supports Kathy--and comes out against hate speech--and shares her discussions with Jeanean Sessums, whom Kathy calls out--but who says she did not write abusive or threatening posts.

Lisa writes: "For the record, I deeply disagree with the premise of sites like meankids.org and others, and am surprised by the women and men who recommended and linked them from the beginning. To me, these sites are the FuckedCompany.com of the blogosphere, a place where bitter cowards who don't have the courage to own their snark hide and spit."

Susan sez: Lisa's post is both spot on and diplomatic in articulating firm beliefs and qualifying Jeaneane's postion, but I have to say I find it hard to condone hate speech and hateful behavior in any form.

IMHO, the bloggers I know who got involved in posting on these sites were about as mean-spirited and low as the Valleywag writer who went looking in Craig's list for personals posts from a local tech developer, found them, and *outed* the guy.

As Liz Lawley writes: "Why does it not surprise me that a site set up specifically to foster online bullying would eventually lead to this kind of awful result?"

People, there's an easy gut check on your own behavior:

• Would you want someone to repeated the same behaviors and focus them on you?
• If the answer is no, and you're not an asshole, why go there?

This is blogging's own Stanford Prison Experiment and and it's both humbling--and it sucks.

"My nephew asked what I do for a living, and I told him I write e-mails. "

-- Yahoo's Caterina Fake, t alking with a CNET reporter about her role at Yahoo! and her job "building the next flickr at Yahoo."

"I do not want to be part of a culture--the Blogosphere--where this is considered acceptable. Where the price for being a blogger is kevlar-coated skin and daughters who are tough enough to not have their "widdy biddy sensibilities offended" when they see their own mother Photoshopped into nothing more than an objectified sexual orifice, possibly suffocated as part of some sexual fetish. (And of course all coming on the heels of more explicit threats)."

--Blogger Kathy Sierra, writing on how threats to her life that have terrified her and way pushed beyond the bounds of what's not insane.

Print is dying, proclaim many web folks, and you know what? When it comes to newspapers, they're pretty much right--industrial grade paper just isn't the medium of choice for news anymore and reporters aren't the only people who can cover events and provide informed perspectives.
Having said that--and added another log to the pyre of newspaper naysayers and cynics, let me also add that I think magazines--my beloved addiction--are in a really different position and may indeed flourish as newspaper decline.
The best magazines are finding ways to marry their web and print, their community and paid coverage and creating wonderous and interesting hybrids that newspapers can match.
Why do magazines work and newspapers don't?
More in my next post, later tonight.

Writer, editor, blogger, welder and *internet famous* celeb Violet Blue is stepping up with a new web site and representation by ICM.

Homeless at 14, Violet has always been good people, an authentic voice and sex positive to the max.

Congrats.

"Once you officially take on the “work from home” moniker, it gives your parents full permission to come to your house at all hours of the day. You warn them about work hours, but when they see their child sitting at a desk typing on a laptop, he's simply on the computer; he's not working."

--Ernie Hsieh, little, yellow, different, writing about how his mother's coming over, checking for heroin in a tube and other clues to her son's (imagined) life now that he's out of the office.

Hugh McLeod's got a super useful post on corporate blogs, corporate blogging and how those pesyk PR and marketing departments can embrace their inner transparencies. Apparently, this is a talk he gave at Edelman PR--and I hope they tattoed the words on their inner arms (okay, I hope they listened closely).
Some of what stood out for me:

• The growth will come, I believe, not by yet more increased efficiencies, but by humanification.
• If corporate blogs work, it's because they help humanify the company.
• Blogging is not about reaching a mass audience.
• Blogs allow you to cheaply and quickly begin a smarter conversation.
• Having a "Smarter Conversation" is not an intellectual decision. It's a moral decision.

There's lots more and it is a great read with case studies, links, and references.

“Readers do business on their terms, not ours. The article said that if a customer escapes, you'd better find out where he's going. And as the customers move, we continue to follow. That essentially has driven us to centralize content. That's a blueprint for the future.”

--Meredith president Jack Griffin quoting a Harvard Business School article called The Customer Has Escaped (fee required) on Meredith's growing investment in digital media.

(via Paid Content )

"I was trying to disperse the community that developed around this blog, from the beginning. The goal being to inspire other people to do the same as I was doing. Jason Kottke once called me the Johnny Appleseed of blogging, and that's something I'm happy with. That was my intention."

--Blogfather Dave Winer, commenting on a CNet article seeking out blog founders-okay, blog fathers-- and wondering why the authors call him 'irascible."

(Susan sez: Dave is one of the folks who started it all, in my book, and someone with a great spirit....not usually irascible.)

So I didn't sleep well last night and when I woke and saw myself in the mirror, I had a start--I was sporting a bright red/purple and well-developed black eye--one which I have no idea how I acquired.

There are dozens of jokes I want to make about hitting myself in my sleep, bumping into my dog's paw, having midnight moments I can't recall, but truth is, I have absolutely no idea what happened.

It was a bit of a trip to walk into a staff meeting and say "Yes, I know I have a black eye, but no, I have no idea how I got it."

Searched the web and aside from learning that if I had a headache my brain might be leaking, I still have no clue. Any useful ideas?

I'm not sure I am going to make this event, but if I didn't have a class that night, I'd make sure to go see Dan Gillmor, author of 'We, the Media' and director of the Center for Citizen Media, chat with journalist and OurMedia guy J.D. Lasica.

JD says that they will be talking with the audience about citizen journalism, YouTube, Wikipedia, Digg, emerging media forms,ethics and standards, and the future of newspapers.

Should be well worth the time--and muy interesting.

When: Wed., March 21, 7:30-9:30 pm

Where: Community Media Center, 900 San Antonio Rd., Palo Alto

Disclosure: I am on the advisory board for the Center for Citizen Media.

"We are very conscious of our reputation. Pornography brings perverts, and we do not want perverts on our site."

True.com CEO and founder Herb Vest, quoted by NY Times reported Brad Stone, in an article about about the contradictory--and sometimes controversial --online dating site (and Y!Personals competitor) True.com (and their sexually suggestive ads)

"We have to get rid of the life that we have planned to have the life that is waiting for you. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come."

- Mythmaker Joseph Campbell, anticipating alot more than a sunny weekend.

Ian Kennedy: Live blogging SXSW panel on Web 2.0, bubbles and busts
The Future of Communities: Community 2.0 conference coverage
Caterina: On the Brickhouse, life and big co innovation efforts

Sexerati: Melissa Gira on digital nomads and yes, sex
David Zizencenko: What makes men fall in love? (Susan sez, yep, he's in my blogroll)

My friend Salim (ex PubSub and Confabb) is moving to the Bay area and joining Yahoo! to lead Brickhouse, the new SF-based incubator. This is a major yeah! in my book...Salim is a good friend and a committed entrepeneur--and this is good both for Y! and for friends and fans of Salim.

Of course, Mike A got the scoop here--and he sez: Congrats to Yahoo for hiring a seasoned entrepreneur to run Brickhouse. Bringing in new blood to stir things up is exactly what they need, and I'm looking forward to seeing the new Brickhouse projects in the near future.

Boss Bradley Horowitz sez: I couldn't be happier or prouder to have both Salim and Caterina involved.

Susan sez: Post back -patting and congrats all around, this rocks.

Congrats, everyone!

It's been 4 years since I wrote my first blog post. If I said blogging has been very, very good to me, it would be no lie.

Back in 2003, I started blogging in New Jersey 2 months after leaving AOL and 7 months before moving (back) to California.

Getting ready to write this post, I went back to week one and read through the earliest posts--one post that caught my attention was a list of blogs I read--it's interesting to note that all of these blogs are still publishing, and that I have gotten to know many of the authors of these blogs in the real world, tho back in the day they were totally digital presences for me.

The March 2003 list of favorite blogs--with what I wrote at the time:

Romenesko: media news-- I tune into Romanesko several times a day, hoping for updates.
Gawker: Media, gossip and Nooh Yawk stuff-- The day Gawker launched, I started checking it as compulsively as AOL execs check their stock portfolios.
Boingboing: A directory of wonderful things--If only magazines were as interesting as Boing Boing!
Buzzmachine: Politics, news & blogging--Stylings, observations and sometimes rants from the inimitable Jeff Jarvis
Marc Canter's Voice:Got bandwidth, baby? Visions of next generation, high-bandwidth tools & products

Ross Mayfield: Mapping the blogosphere--Cogent analysis of the development of social networks meets rampant blogging evangelism

(Susan sez: Take note how remarkable it is that ALL these blogs--and bloggers--are still going strong.)

Back in 2003, I was impassioned about blogging and RSS and starting a small consulting practice focusing on business strategy, product development and audience customer acquisition/retention. After I'd been blogging for a few months, I ended up getting covered in a New York Times story, and then Dave Winer invited me to the first BloggerCon--an amazing experience--but no one I worked for cared about blogging, social media, or citizen journalism--all those things were way ahead of the curve--and how that all has changed.

Looking back, I see how many of the bloggers became my new community--since there was no business for blogging yet, we were bonded by our passion for the expressiveness, the authenticity and the tools--and the endless possiilities for tweaking and inventing improvements to these brand-new platforms.

Now, 4 years in, blogs have truly entered the mainstream and my own passion for blogging remains unslaked--as does my appreciation of the people I have meet as I learn about--and build--social media.

Happy blog anniversary to me--hope to reference this post when I hit year number 5.

Bonus links
Anniversary #2
Anniversary #3

Side note #1
So you might ask, what are the blogs I read obsessively today?
Well, my stalwarts are aggregators Techmeme, WeSmirch, BlogHer and Digg, plus Paid Content, Valleywag, Techcrunch--and my 800+ feeds in my Bloglines reader, where sonline dating, sex and relationship blogs hold almost equal sway at this point with media, tech, and tech entrepeneurs.

Oh, and I am obsessed with both flickr and upcoming, which provide endless minutes of interesting discoveries.

Social search engine co Eurekster gets $5 million in second round funding--investor Michael Zimmerman of TVP says it's because of its success with the Swicki platform.

Quote: "Eurekster has demonstrated tremendous vision for the future of Internet search with its Swicki platform, organically growing its Swicki network to over 18,000 publishers and 50,000 Swickis worldwide, predominantly through word of mouth and organic growth."

Susan sez: As I've mentioned before, I worked on the swicki with these folks while I was still consulting and really like this team--they are great--but with all the social search engines happening, I wondered how they'd fare--it's gratifying to see how viable their product is and how their success in messaging and distributing it has grown exponentially.

(Via TechCrunch and Paid Content and VentureBeat and sphereit)

"Here's what else is new and exciting (or terrible) in money: there is real poverty among the soldiers who fight our wars. There are fist fights to get children into $30,000 a year kindergartens and pre-schools in the right neighborhoods in Manhattan. There are 40 million Americans without health care insurance. There are almost 40 million baby boomers with no savings for retirement. There is a long waiting list for Bentleys at the dealership in Beverly Hills.There are soldiers' wives selling blood to buy toys for their kids. "

--Ben Stein, writing in The American Spectator about today's social economics.

(Via digg)

Disney's the latest big(media)co to launch a niche site embedded with all sorts of Disney service and promotions for entertainment and products.

This time, Disney's going after parents--moms, in particular--with Disney Family, a community-focused service helmed by Emily Smith that will offer info and resources, along with blog and link directories, user profiles and lots of content created by the audience. A wiki-pedia is planned with user-generated content along the lines of Yahoo Answers focusing on questions like "How can I get my kid to sleep through the night?"

Businessweek has a quote from Paul Yanover, Disney exec, saying: "This audience doesn't want to hook, up. It wants to find others who can say I've been through this as well."

I am betting the Disney brand--plus the attention paid to what Mom's want--and their inclusion as bloggers on the site--will give this one good lift-off and numbers right from the get go.

So I spent last Saturday at Country Living Magazine's one day conference for women entrepeneurs, held, for the second year in a row, in Chicago. For one day, from 12-6 pm, 500 women sat in a large room in a big hotel and listened to fellow female entrepeneurs describe how they started their businesses, sourced their product lines, handled writing a business plan and working with family and raising money and pricing product lines. The room buzzed with energy: the energy of these women who made things of out textiles or paper, or clay created beauty/fashion/home decor products, and sold boutique foods and spices, was palpable.

Sitting in the crowd, one of the few Californians in a swarm of Midwestern and Eastern folk. it was hard not to compare the crowd--and the conference organizers--to BlogHer and my friends-- Lisa, Elisa and J ory--who run it--but the differences stood out as much as the similarities.

For one thing, the Country Living crowd was coming together around a small range of successful entrepeneurs-- Margaret Josephs, Halligan Norris, Barbara Cosgrove--who'd started their own home-based businesses and branched out from there--but they seemed essentially seperate from the audience, who wanted to learn what they had to teach.

At the last BlogHer conference last summer, the rooms and the audiences were both part of the scene--but the gap between audience and speaker seemed much smaller (think unconference).

At BlogHer, many people attending knew one another virtually already; not an hour went by without a couple of participants greeting each other with gasps and exclaminations of delight:

"It is so great to meet you in person! I love your blog/ flickr stream/podcast/whatever!"

This sense of virtual connection and community...so much a part of blogging--is something that the CL conference seemed to lack--but there's no reason it couldn't be supplied to a future event.

Sitting in the room listening to the real-world entrepeneurs talk, my thought was of how BlogHer and CL could join forces to serve women with current state of the art community tools and business starter kits--there's such an amazing groundswell in this country of female-owned home-based businesses that then grow into their own facilities and offices--and yet where's the flash-point for serving those folk?

The energy at the CL conference was great, as is the energy at BlogHer events--but hey, I'd like to see these two emerging communities--which definitely overlap--begin to meet--and merge.

If you're reading this post and you can point me to conferences and communities for women entrepeneurs that span the physical and the virtual, please point me to them--I would love to learn more...and meanwhile, I will be trying to put the BlogHer and the CL folks together to talk about how they might support one another.

So, I spent the weekend having a weekend, and came into work today with no time to blog and...this post from Jeremy Toeman caught my attention--it's a look at how the 50 most popular first names in the US show up in Google Search--and it's really, I suppose--a text on how techies and bloggers have taken over some (most?) of the top links on the Big G.

Some of JT's findings--

• ROBERT: Need you ask? It's Mr. Scoble (ahead of De Niro, Redford, etc)!
• MICHAEL: Michaels Arts & Crafts Store (that's some good SEO). Michael Jackson is first, with Arrington second, then Moore third.
• RICHARD: Another king, Richard I of England, but he's followed by another top blogger, Richard MacManus, who is only a few spots ahead of Richard Simmons.
• SUSAN: Some astrologist is on top, so I'll do my share to try to help get blogger Susan Mernit ranked higher. If you don't read it already, I humbly suggest you subscribe to Susan's great blog right away! (Susan sez: Yes, you are absolutely right, I was so flattered to see this--and to happy to try to boost my place in Susan land, that I wrote this post.)
• DONNA: Congratulations to Donna Nammer, the first female blogger to own her first name on Google. I wonder if she knows Scoble?

Susan sez: Actually, Jeremy made an interesting point when he did this exercise--bloggers outrank porn stars, at least when you have Safe Search turned on. Given the way porn outranks blogging on the Web, this may be one of the only accountings where the writers win.

"Why can't I put an Apple Widget or a Yahoo! Widget on my blog or anywhere else? Widgets should be able to go anywhere, I shouldn't have to go to them."

--David Beach, stating the (true but) obvious (so where are those widgets, already?)

Bonus Dave quote: "Insomnia is the new depression."

Gina Bianchini, Ning blog:8 steps to creating a great social network. "Creating your own social network is a lot like hosting a fabulous party. Like all parties, it usually starts with being an interesting person and a love of meeting people."

Paid Content; Motorola European marketing director Simon Thompson at the European OPA conference, channelling Jan Brady about the iphone: “We thought it looked very pretty and white. iPhone, iPhone, iPhone! I'm just bored of this darned question. Look, there will be a billion phones sold next year - on a good year, there will be 10 million iPhones.”

From the department of If you believe this is real you are an idiot, courtesy TechCrunch: "A Goldman Sachs trader in the UK named “Charlie” was warned by his employer that his visits to Facebook on company time were to stop. He spent, apparently, over 500 hours on Facebook in a six month period."

Alex Iskold has a piece at Read/Write Web that explores Technorati as a tool for measuring popularity in the blogosphere and then describes what's popular right now by analyzing the top 50 blogs listed by Technorati.

Reading Alex's piece, which Richard edited, so many off the mark assumptions leapt out at me, I needed to write this post.

According to Alex, "Tech is the number one focus of popular blogs. Politics is second and pop culture third, which clearly gets a lot of attention both off line and online."

That's all fine, but I'd suggest that this is only the case because we're not in the middle of an election race--and that the minute the Presidential elections--or any other hotly contested political battle-kick in, these stats will flip, big time.

Furthermore, looking at the top blogs misses the singular impact of the long tail and the aggregate value of networks.

While it's true that that highest common dominator as described by Technorati stats is political, tech/consumer tech and pop culture blogs, I'd argue there's a significant readship and interest in parenting blogs(mommy blogs in particular), gossip blogs (does pop culture cover that?), erotica and sex blogs, and DIY, crafting and design blogs that Technorati stats--somehow so persistently squewed toward what geeks read--consistently fail to account for.

I bet that if you could compare Technorati stats with Topix and Feedburner stats, for example, you'd get a very different picture of the sum total of what was popular in the blogosphere--and it would be a more accurate view.

(Susan sez: I understand Technorati is measuring links to blogs to derive the top 100, my point is that there are other, more accurate measures writers like Alex should take into consideration--or, put another way, generalizations can be inaccurate.

Interestingly, when I run a search for Mommy blogs on Technorati, I get 388 results back as blog posts, but when I run the same search on Google BlogSearch I get 271,743 results for mommy blogs--Now, I realize that neither one of these is counting very accurately, but it's a heads up.

And when I typed in politics blogs on Google BlogSearch, there were 221,295 results (for posts) compared to Technorati's total of 24,582--the point being, even as I acknowledge the different ways that Technorati and Google Blogsearch compute and present their totals, that Technorati is no longer be presenting the most complete and accurate picture of behavior in the blogosphere--and hasn't been for a while.)

So Alex's piece is an interesting exercise in deconstructing Technorati stats--but not the bellweather for blogosphere topics, readers, or even what's truly popular beyond the eternal top ten --or in this case top 50--list.

I'd value seeing Richard follow up with another analysis of what people are actually reading and writing in the blogosphere across a broader range of categories and then work backwards to tell us what analytical tools are most clearly measuring that behavior--how about it--a true look at where readers--and writers--are putting effort beyond the greatest common denominators.

"But if you haven't spent time trying to turn gears in the belly of the beast, it can be like trying to coach without ever having played the game. "

--Rich Skrenta, Topic and Open Director founder, explaining why time working in a bigco product organization is invaluable to start up folk.

"...Women buy 52% of all consumer electronics. We buy for 3 generations at all times. We're a fat wallet that none of the techies are diving into. I wanted to do that at MS since that is also one of my specialties, but that battle was going to be like fighting at the Alamo."

--f ormer Microsoft evangelist and SV blogger Stephanie Quilao, who left her new job at Microsoft after 9 1/2 weeks when she decided they just didn't really get it and she wasn't being heard (my interpetation).

Terry Heaton deduces that MySpace--based on sales materials and some inside sources--is going to launch a news area for its users. Some of the copy Terry posts:

• MySpace is getting into the news business with launch due in early 2nd quarter, according to inside sources and the company's own sales materials.
• MySpace News takes News to a whole new level by dynamically aggregating real-time news and blogs from top sites around the Web
• Creates focused, topical news pages that users can interact and engage with throughout their day
• MySpace is making the news social, allowing users to:Rate and comment on every news item that comes through the systemSubmit stories they think are cool and even author pieces from their MySpace blog
• MySpace users previously had to leave the site to find comprehensive news, gossip, sporting news, etc. With MySpace News, we bring the news to them!

"When a Ridder crosses the Mississipi, you know how fast the river is changing course."

--Ex-KRD exec Ken Doctor, writing about Ridder scion Par Ridder leaving the Pioneer Press to helm the Star Tribune, and how the sales and acquisitions of these two Minneapolis/St.Paul papers brought this all to pass.

(Susan sez: Note to non-newsies: The Pioneer Press had been in Ridder's family for decades until it was sold last year to McClatchy, which then sold it to Hearst. It now is being managed for Hearst by Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group.)

It's International Women's Day and also Blog Against Sexism day.

Viviane writes:
Here's some stats from the National Council on Research for Women:

• Data on women's/girls struggle for equality has gone missing in the Bush Administration. The current administration continues to engage in a pattern of omission, distortion, and spin when it comes to information about women and girls. Data on the Department of Labor website has gone missing and the FDA continues to block approval of Emergency Contraception despite research findings that support its use.
• Women are still underpaid. Women earn only 77 cents to every dollar earned by men. (Former MA democratic Lt. Gov. Evelyn Murphy is doin great things to shake this up…check out www.womenaregettingeven.org) Also, can 1 million women against WalMart be hallucinating? This is serious!
• Women are still massively underrepresented in the sciences. Despite substantial gains in the number of women pursuing graduate degrees in the sciences, women currently earn only 20% of all PhDs in computer science, less than 27% in physics, and only 17% in engineering. Studies show that women in science experience discrimination and double standards (sorry Larry Summers, but its really true.)
• Women are underrepresented in corporate leadership. Women have made up more than 40% of the workforce since 1977, and are currently almost 50%, yet only 9 women are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

Susan sez: At this point, civil and economic equality for women feels like an old, old song...but as long as the need is there, keep singing it.

"Enlarging each other is the deepest calling of journalism, whether it's done by bloggers, anchors or editors.
We are all authors of each other. What we call authority is the right we give others to author us, to make us who we are. That right is one we no longer give only to our newspapers, our magazines, our TV and radio stations. We give it to anybody who helps us learn and understand What's Going On in the world. In that world the number of amateur informants goes up while the number of editors on newspaper staffs goes down."

--Doc Searls writing about giant zero journalism, his phrase for how citizen media and big media are both just elements in a user to user continuum where we consume and contribute and play it forward but where big newspapers still just don't get it (sez Doc).

Bonus, related links--

• Amy Gahran interpets what Doc is talkin' about.
• Howard Owens writes about user distributed media and big media cos, lots of good observations.
• Knight Citizen News Network, Citizen Media: Fad or the Future of News? — The rise and prospects of hyperlocal journalism
• Dan Gillmor and Lisa Williams, Center for Citizen Media : Frontiers of engagement in community engagemert