• TechCrunch: The super-talented Tish Whitcraft will head customer service at MySpace. Tish was our senior customer care exec at Yahoo! Personals, and she ran a great team. Smart hire.
• The Atlantic: The coming death shortage--"f an increasingly influential group of researchers is correct, the lurid spectacle of intergenerational warfare will become a typical social malady."
• RWW: Rapleaf study says women outnumber men on social networks."The only social networks studied that didn't have more women than men in the 18-24 year old group were venerable old LinkedIn (where incidentally the 25-34 age group was tops) and a site called Perfspot."
• Steve Hodson: Watch where you are pointing that camera, bub! Or, it's not only subjects who feel harassed.
  

Scoble's got a lovely post up about digerati, normals, and marketing. It's worth a complete read, but the summary would be that early adapters are passionate, the American hordes are dull and not passionate (about technology tools, that is), and everyone trying to broaden their installed base would do well to:
a) use Friendfeed
b) load your pages fast
c) be well indexed in Google and have decent SEO
d) know who your audience is and if you want the masses, swing for the fences with some mainsteam marketing tactices, like getting a celeb to use your stuff.

My own thoughts, as someone building an app I hope a wide range of users will use (and as someone who ran a mainstream service for dating)is that Robert's points are all right on, but the other critical piece is this: build something that people will want to use because it solves a particular problem better than everything else out there, or offers a degree of control and expressiveness the rest of the market doesn't, or can't  Then take every bit of Robert's advice..

So I really like FriendFeed. Enough to keep using it, multiple times a day.

One of my favorite features is the commenting thread where readers can share around a specific post; I find fresh conversations with a broader range of people sometimes taking place and I treasure the chance to step outside the social media bell jar.

Another favorite is the Best of feature--I like to see what's been most commented on in a day or a week again, it's that sense of freshness and discussion I value.

I also like--and just started to use, thanks to a post by Thomas Hawk, the search feature.
And I really like--and make good use-- of the presentation of del.icio.us links with commentary.

BUT, there's a bunch of things I wish FriendFeed would do:
A) Recommend more women, I rarely see women in the recommendations of popular sources, what is with that? Has anyone gotten more than 3 women recommended, total?

B) Publish a directory of rooms, at least the open ones. I have still not figured out how to find them(Okay, just found this post on using Google search by Andy Beard).  And of course, being the list addict I try not to be, I also want to know which of the public rooms are the biggest/the most active and the most popular.

C) Show best of for an individual account. buzzyeah has written about wanting this feature and I agree, it's a good one,

Friendfeed has done a good job of listening to their community and rolling out features, let's see if there's any traction here.

Did you know that #ramday means random about me day and that it's the tag (#hashtag) for personal bits of data that wouldn't usually come up in conversation to be the subject of a tweet?

And if you want to see #ramday tags on twitter, you....Uh, you can't. You need to go to search.twitter.com (aka summize) and take a look there at this.

Examples:

• xolotl: as a kid I wanted to be a dwarf & adopted the name "Oin" from The Hobbit...some high school friends still call me Oin, or Oink #ramday
  less than a minute ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  grant: Over the years, I have started at least 4 different print publications -- none of which are still going. #ramday
  1 minute ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  Jensenrf: I got my first cellphone sometime during the summer of 2001. And if it wasn't for @nettaj it probably would have been even later. #ramday

Just saw that Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who made an amazing series of videos about the meaning of life as he faced a terminal illness, has died.

He was amazing, RIP.

I've just taken the privacy permissions off my friendfeed and twitter accounts.
That means you no longer need to be approved by me to follow these streams.

Interested to see how this plays out.
As of 10 pm Thursday, I have 517 followers on twitter and 1463 on friendfeed.
Let's see if that number goes up--and what percentage are or are not spammers--by Sunday night.

• Miss Aniela: Am I the only digital nomad on the planet who hasn't really focused on this amazing phtographer? Natalie Dybisz's  self-portraits and sense of mood are fascinating, and, of course, she blogs.
• Joe Lazarus: "Here's a free business idea for a budding iPhone entrepreneur.  Develop a graphical iPhone App Builder that lets non-technical people like me make simple iPhone apps through a drag & drop interface."
• PB Wiki TwitPacks: Need more people to follow? Check out--and add yourself--to the self-organizing lists here.
• Blogcosm: Who spoke at BlogHer 08?
• Brad Feld: The power--and value--of social gaming (and Zynga's $$ round)
  

I'm always leary of everyone's "Top" lists (tho of course I thrill to be included on them), but there's a joy, range and sassiness in Orli's latest list of 50 powerful women bloggers that makes me want to to share it,. (Okay, the list also makes me want to dance to it--she's got 80s disco as the soundtrack for a slide show.)

Some of the bloggers new to me that I will be checking out for inclusion to my reading list include:

• Cleverclogs - Marjolein Hoekstra
• Slikcharm - Laurel Papworth
• Profy - Cyndy Aleo-Carreira
• Lorelle - Lorelle VanFossen
• Nten - Holly Ross
• SiliconCally - Calley Nye
• GettingAttention -Nancy Schwartz
• Michelle Martin - Michelle Martin
• IslandGirl -Lisa M.Shammas
• KeeryHowley - Kerry Howley
• Thornet - Michelle Thorne
• Carobotero - Carolina Botero
• Lisa Goldman - Lisa Goldman
• Mideastyouth - Esra'a Al Shafei
• Blacklooks - Sokari Ekine
• Pop17 - Sarah Austin
• Crushofthemonth - Myriam
• Consortpartners - Kathy Johnson
• Rocksinmydryer - Shannon Lowe
• Clear Blue dei - Susan Mellott
• Geekspace for Women - Maria Webster

That's almost half the list, which means, once again, Orli has taught me something new.

Marjoelein Hoekstra has put together a twitter list (aka twitterpack) for these folks (explains some new follows)

NOTE: If you're on this list, and you come here-or if you're a blogger who'd like to support the inclusion of women and diverse voices in the conference realm, I urge you to add yourself to The Speaker's Wiki, a resource for speakers lovingly tended by Mary Hodder, another amazingly wise blogger who I'd add to the above list in a flash. (Ross Mayfield and the folks at Socialtext also deserve kudos for hosting this.)

Since we're in the deep middle of trying to get a product out the door, define our core purpose and value, and get the business partners, go to market plan and so on all ready to go, a post by a VC I admire about a company he's committed to has to catch my eye.

And of course when it's a company(meetup.com)that Brad says is using technology to solve real world problems, I look even harder (after all that is exactly what we're all about as well).

But this big wet kiss of VC love for Scott and his company! Wow, I am bowled over--I hope someday we have some investors who are so aligned with our business strategy and our vision, they send this kind of love our way (even if it is mostly a ploy to help Scott & co get some talent at such a talent-tight time).

Brad, way to go!

(Cross posted at PSCo)

So my friend Chad Dickerson is going off to Etsy as their CTO. This is amazing news, both because I am a total Etsy fan (enamored of both the business and the team), and because I am a Chad fan as well. During our time at Yahoo! and beyond, Chad has been a friend and partner in crime, so this new opportunity for him makes me thrilled--this guy is solid and rocks.

And of course, I think you will love Brooklyn!
Congrats, dude, and congrats, Etsy.

"Women who are speaking, who are consumers who talk, sort of like journalists, sort of like authors; we are conscious, individually and, more and more, collectively, of our power to speak and be seen in the world of public discourse. We have jobs and we're in public, we're out of the domestic sphere, but our thoughts, the way we're framed in public conversations, in the media, isn't yet all the way out of the domestic sphere. My point is that we are no longer containable by old style media. We aren't an elite of "influencers" to be courted and co-opted. We're journalists who write about who we are, not what we're told to write, like a million mommy-blogging Hunter S. Thompsons writing The Curse of Lono instead of their assigned sports article."

--Liz Henry, blogging about women online, post blogher.

"TechCrunch and Techmeme get as much grumpiness tossed their direction as they do because they each own a valuable niche in the blogosphere, and are expanding their lead, rather than relinquishing it.

While you could say that TechCrunch competes with ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, GigaOM or others, they have cemented themselves as the go-to site for new services entering the market, and even their opinion pieces are widely read, with almost a million unique RSS subscribers taking note. Techmeme's best competition at this point is BlogRunner, with Hacker News, Dave Winer's TechJunk, Duncan Riley's QMeme and more organic sites like RSSmeme or ReadBurner coming up in conversation.

But Techmeme's original perceived competition, like TailRank and Megite, are mere shadows of what they initially promised. Meanwhile, TechCrunch is bringing on new writers, and posting more stories than ever (See: The Statbot: TechCrunch Statistics A-W), and Techmeme is going more mainstream, with news sources like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times featuring more prominently than most individual bloggers."

--louis gray, in what I think is a very good post on blogging backlash, top blogs and blognetworks and the general speedup of interest and activity in this sphere.

Nice complement, this from Scoble.

In the past few weeks, I've had talked with late 30s-40-something friends who express disdain and frustration with both Facebook and LinkedIn.

These friends feel that Facebook is not really usefully, too diffuse, and most of the applications on it are a waste of time, which means it is great if you want to waste time, but not as a tool. Other friends (and sometimes the same friends) are also not hot on LinkedIn.  They like it better, because it has great critical mass in the job field, but they're frustrated by the clunkiness of the search, the cumbersome communications tools, and what they see as the employment-specific narrowness of the experience.

I'm an active FB and LinkedIn user, and I find them to be invaluable, but that's because I use them as explicit directories. In other words, when I meet people I'd like to stay connected to (and remember how to contact them and who they are) I add them to FB and Linked In.

LinkedIn works as a professional rolodex for me, a list of people I am connected to that allows me to see what they are doing and have done and how to reach them.

FB also keeps me connected, but that's the color wash on the black and white LN listing--if it's someone I've met briefly, FB can bring them to life as a more 3-D person--someone who updates their news feed, likes particular kinds of sports and music, and--often--shares friends with me.

Basically, what this means is that  I use these two services to create explicit social network directories--listings and contact management that provide useful and interesting records of people I meet.

Interestingly, one could argue--and I will--that the biggest wasted effort is email. Your email list--particularly the people you message, as opposed to the people (and spambots) that message you--is a rich contact list, but the data attached to each person is pretty much buried. There's no way to know that smernit@gmail.com is me, and to assemble the meta data about who I am that will provide as rich a picture (and not feel totally stalkerly) as LinkedIn and Facebook can.

(And yes, I know people have been talking--and trying--for years now--to build email out as the basis for a social network, and that *smart* email is one of the so called Next Big Things--just show me the products and the people using them, folks).

"Being a mom has forced me to become less self-centered and more aware of the small thing/big thing differences in life. Yes, I still have dreams that I'm being picked on by my seventh-grade classmates but when I wake up I'm able to laugh it off a bit better. Being at Blogher has made me more aware of this change...(snip).... I almost never approach anyone because I'm intimidated, but once we're in a conversation I'll become quite extroverted. Since Penelope has been born, a lot of this fear has disappeared, though I still find it difficult at times to go up to a person and say hello."


--Six Apart co-founder Mena Trott, blogging about speaking at BlogHer this afternoon and her life today.

Susan sez: I like this post because it talks honestly about transformative experiences about becoming a parent, business and blogging, and letting go of ego.

BlogHer is big this year, and I heard lots of comments around the themes "There are so many new people," "Is it  more corporate?" (50 sponsors), and "panels are uneven." At the same time, most everyone I've seen has ranged from fully engaged to over the top delirious to be here. While I'm not sure what the verdict on the different panels so far is, there's no question but that hundreds of women have come to BH with groups of friends, just like I have, and part of the joy us hanging out with people you kn ow in this incredibly woman-positive atmosphere.

But that doesn't mean partying is the only thing. I was doing--or seeing.  I ran two sessions back to back yesterday--one with the wonderful Patricia Handschiegel, founder of StyleDiary (and architect of a successful exit/sale)--one about funding opportunities--both tech incubators and non-profit programs--and the other about women entrepreneurs (with Patricia, the perfect person to speak on this.)

 Both our sessions were packed--50-60 people crammed into a small room for each, most fully engaged. In short, the hunger to learn more about how to start your own business, how to get funded, how to make it work, is huge for the BlogHer crowd--as is the wish to connect with other women entrepreneurs and learn from them.
 
 Anne Corriston, one of the participants, took some notes, and here's the link and some of the comments she captures (thanks, Anne!):

Inner challenges are the hardest to overcome. You shouldn't ask, "Who am I to do this?" but rather, "Who am I not to do this?"

A great entrepreneur is someone who can live in chaos and uncertainty. Entrepreneurs say, "I think there's a better way."

Follow your passion.

Sometimes what holds us back is not the glass ceiling but the sticky floor.

Don't let anyone discredit your value.

Success is about persistence. Keep fighting your way through.

Figure out how to keep going no matter what.

Your recovery strategy is what's important; avoiding mistakes is not.

Know that you need help. Ask for mentors.

Combine believing in what you're doing with riding through the absolute fear.

You must have three things: 1. Passion about your interests. 2. Truth - be real, be honest about what's going on. 3. Belief in yourself. The ones who fail stop believing in themselves. (Note: these words of wisdom came from a male participant in the group whose name, I believe, was Mikhail.)

I keep moving.

Play to your strengths. I'm not good at everything and I don't have time to learn everything. Find someone at a price you can afford who can help free you to focus on what you have a track record of being successful at.

Stand tall within yourself. Define what success means and stay true to your entrepreneurial vision.

Entrepreneurship is like a soccer game - sometimes you're running, sometimes you're kicking, sometimes you're sitting on the bench.

Failure is in the eye of the beholder. You're in charge of how you're going to view what's happened.

Balance is great but balance doesn't make you great.

It was thrilling to learn that Marshall Kirkpatrick's article on women bloggers to note  in Read Write Web included this one. Shout out much appreciated.

It was thrilling to learn that Marshall Kirkpatrick's article on women bloggers to note  in Read Writr Werb included this one. Shout out much appreciated.

My life at this moment, aka the past three days.

Tuesday night we pitched and demoed for the TechStars mentors group and our fellow companies; learned A LOT about how people see our product and how we can improve our presentation. Adrenaline from that night led to a late evening supper, going to bed late, and then getting up early to pack for the flight to SFO.

Wednesday was an early rise, quick packing and the People's Software road show to DEN, then on a plane to SFO, meetings and demos in the Valley and the city to wise friends. (Again, we learned A LOT from the discussions, truly useful,) then the BlogHer's CE and Speaker's meet up (oh, joy) and check into the hotel for the conference.

Thursday is conference start--1200 people roaming the halls, 50 sponsors in exhibit halls, wildly diverse group of bloggers--but with lots of faces familiar from past years.

Feel like I can only get a tiny slice of what is going on here, but gee, it's excellent to have arrived at this conference I look forward to every year.

"Social networks today rely on friends of friends or real world connections to drive growth. But a handful of iPhone-only social networks actually help drive new connections in the real world. And the backbone of those applications is location awareness."

--Mike Arrington, writing at TC about iPhones and such, saying "Our goal is to have iPhone users at our meetups and conferences be able to network with each other, swap contact information, and meet new people", and "ignore at your peril."

" In a nutshell, Summize nailed realtime conversational search right out the gate."

--Jay Virdy, Summize blog writing about the move from launch to sale (with tons of customer monitoring and responsiveness in the middle.)

(Great to see the shout outs to former AOLers, including Gerry Campbell and Jim Davidson.)

The impressively shrewd and thoughtful entrepreneur John Borthwick has a cogent post on the acquisition of summize by twitter and the evolution of what he calls the "now web"-or what I have been thinking of as the "right now web" or the "just in time web" (ie it's there when you need/want it.)

John writes:
"Somewhere in the past few months the way that I experience the Internet and specifically live information changed -- there is a "now web" emerging out of an ecosystem of loosely coupled products. There has always been an immediate, instant component to the web and web communications -- it goes back to mailing lists, IM, email & blog commenting. But its taking on a whole new form -- the density of the conversations and the speed at which they emerge and evolve is different."

Susan sez: We're thinking alot about the right now web with the products we're developing--and soon pushing out to beta. Twitter, summize and the betaworks products John's team is building are among the products and companies we have been closely watching.

For the past few years at BlogHer, I was into the idea of trying to create a private space where identity bloggers who wanted to protect their identity could talk without photos, recording etc.

That worked not that well, but well enough, but this year, when I stopped working for Yahoo!, I realized that I felt less need to buffer my personal life from my "corporate" identity (ie. I no longer had a corporate identity.) 

Leaving Yahoo!, getting to know Sarah Dopp who came out as genderqueer, and having my own coming out as non-monogamous(plus a huge repressed girl crush on Patti Smith) made me become much more interested for this year, in talking with fellow BlogHers about the whole experience of owning and making public things in your life that you'd deliberately kept secret as a way to protect yourself.  When I shared these ideas with Elisa, of course things started to take a very interesting turn, and we cam up with this panel on Coming Out Via Blog.

Coming Out isn't just about using your blog to tell your extended circle you're gay or queer or bi or whatever--it's about the way BlogHers are using their blogs to share truths about themselves and their experiences that may feel hard to say, but have power in being integrated and owned. We have a diverse panel who have survived--and written about--depression, bi-polar issues, eating disorders, rape, claiming and reclaiming non-mainstream sexual and political views--and how we have used the blog to speak truths about ourselves, to build community and support, and to try to help others who may be walking our path.

I am honored to manage this panel, and to create a safe space to honor all the hard truths and vulnerable sharings we are sometimes moved to speak.

Got a call on my phone from an 800 number saying that there had been possible fradulent activity on my card (they did not specify which one) and they wanted to validate recent purchases. Given that the caller was automated and did not specify which company they were from, I was suspicious.  I was even more suspicious when I called back from a friend's phone and they wanted me to verify my phone number  before they would go further(!).

After I hung up, I called the companies whose credit services I used and checked: neither had called me. A little searching on the web suggested this number is used for phone phishing.

"Listen up. I am a mother and I  have root. Stop stereotyping my kind as technologically ineffectual or I will RF-RM all your data."

--Peoples Software co-founder Lisa Williams, remarking on how so many fellas in Boulder drop the phrase into their demos "well, we don't expect our mother to be able to use it."

Lisa also sez: " If you are trying to create an online service or software product and you think this way, you will lose a ton of money. Consider this: the average age of a mother with preschool age children in the us is 27. Do you really think a 27 year old doesn't know what the Internet is?"

Susan sez: This woman is wicked smart, eh?

At the upcoming BlogHer conference at the The Westin to Francis Hotel there will be a bird of a feather session on Friday July 18th at 2:30 PM (till 3:10)  focus on funding and incubation opportunities for women entrepreneurs,  I'll be facilitating this, so come and take part, please if you're looking for funding, have an idea for a business, or want to grow a business you have.

We're going to talk about opportunities women entrepreneurs have for getting both coaching and assistance when seeking funding, and getting funding itself--Kristien Taylor, the community manager for the Knight News Challenge (which will give away approximately $5MM in 2008-09,application process starting this summer) will attend, and we will also talk about TechStars and other incubators--

Come to find out more, or to share advice and experiences with fellow BlogHers!

(Note:As someone involved with both the Knight News Challenge and with TechStars,(where Lisa Williams, Catherine Taylor and myself--three women who met up and got close via BlogHer--are launching a company call People's Software) are spending the summer working away--I've have first hand experience with both this programs and want to share what I've learned about these relatively new types of opportunities--as well as give others a chance to ask.)

"A generation of guys who will settle for nothing less than a porn star meets a generation of women who expect their boyfriend to crawl through their bedroom window at night and just nuzzle gently until they fall asleep."

--Gail Collins, writing in the NYTimes on the success of "The Twilight Sagas", a series of vampire loves teen girl romance novels written by a Mormon housewife that have sold over 6.5 million copies in the United States in less than three years (nice complement to those Left Behind books, eh?)

"Using Compete.com for 4 other significant technology Blog services we get some interesting numbers. TechCrunch should be valued at between $200 and $450m; GigaOm at between $46 and $55m; ReadWriteWeb at between $63 and $65m and Venturebeat between $50 and $53m. I'd say a merger between these 4 would bring them collectively up to about $350-500m even without the synergies and growth prospects of being one."

-Keith Teare, doing a back of the envelope valuation of the tech blog scene after the acquisition of Paid Content by Guardian Media Group and speculation that Tech Crunch (where Keith has an interest) is talking with AOL.

So I have now been off sugar for almost two weeks. White sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup, honey, natural organic sugar--you name it--if it doesn't come packaged in a piece of fruit, I am not consuming it. (And that means no cookies at lunch, no chocolate bits after dinner, no coffee cake, no syrup on pancakes, etc.) Amazingly, while I have done diets before, this is the first time in my life I made the decision to stop eating sugar, and honestly, at the time I made the choice, I wasn't even sure why I was doing it.

Well now, just about two weeks in, I have learned alot more about why I eat sugar from not eating it than I did from eating it. And in the one little slip I had last week, I also realized that while I can have a bit of a sweet and not go back to daily candy, I actually feel a lot better being off the stuff(and a lot less addicted having no sugar at all than trying to manage the problems of having "just a little.")

So here's the deal on why I quit, and what I realized about eating sweets once I'd stopped eating them:
A) I got scared.
B) Sugar is not an appropriate reward for surviving something difficult, a way to keep yourself amused via your palate, or a good choice for a comfort food when things are tough.

Cookies are not my Mom
Do short term fixes, especially the ones you stuff in your mouth, really solve anything?
f you eat cake while Rome burns, you are more likely to end up in a bad way.
Why wait till the big problem hits to address what you knew all along you should be doing--and didn't?

 Isn't eating as a type of reward/release (or drinking, or whatever..) just a way to push off stuff you should process and deal with?

Moving to Boulder, giving up my apartment, leaving friends and family and working my tail off with the team to make People's Software happen and ship product is hard enough work that if I keep using sweets to stablize my stress, I could gain 15 lbs, just about the last thing I need.

EPIC FAIL (I like this expression).

So the plan is sugar only rarely, and only in occasional desserts--no snacks, no treats, no rewards.  So far it's working.

Steve, I hope  get to buy you a drink and hang out sometime when we are in the same town and time zone. Your post yesterday was just so right on and did a great job clarifying both what you meant earlier and addressing the points that turned me into a fearsome curmudgeon for the moment.

This is what makes you someone whose opinion I value and whose blog I enjoy reading.

"It's easier for a female to start her own company than to move through the ranks of a big corporation. You don't have to ask anyone's permission in a start-up."

--Jessica Livingston, co-founder of early-stage start-up incubator, Y Combinator., quoted in a Mercury News story on how the number of women chief executives at Silicon Valley's biggest technology companies dropped to zero this week, with the departure of Diane Greene from VMWare.

I'm delighted for my old friends Rafat Ali and Staci Kramer and the sale of Content Next to the Guardian Media Group for a reported $30million plus, but it also underscores how Guardian has something many traditional media companies in the US don't seem to have--a focused, outcomes based strategy on where they want to end up in the next 3 years.

First of all, the Guardian is acquiring talent.  Not only do they have the wonderful Simon Waldman and others who have been there for a while, they recently acquired Matt MaAlister from Yahoo! to run the Guardian Developer Network. 

Second of all, they seem to have a plan, not only can they support a developer ecosystem, but now they're building a base with a digital media trade news and conference company that has a global focus and that can help them increase CPMs in their online advertising business, as well as diversify their revenue stream.

And Rafat, of course, gets what many entrepreneurs come to dream of--economic validation for hard word, consistent execution, an ongoing focus--and the chance to continue to grow his dream with others picking up some of the work  so that the 22 hour days, 7 days a week, can die down.

"I find the colloquialism "You must join the conversation" a tired phrase legacy of 2006. It's overused, oversold, thrown around and just not accurate."

--Blogger Jeremiah Oywwang, Web Strategist, writing about how rankings, ratings, and even reading can be among the greatest behaviors within a community.

Many of the  BlogHer contributing editors have gotten onto twitter to be more connected during BlogHer's sold out big conference next week.

This is a great list of BlogHer contributing editors and staff people to follow, compiled by Rachelle Mee-Chapman, aka magpiegirl.  Check these ladies out, and if you think you should be on this listas a BlogHer attendee or friend of, please add your name in the comments and I will update:

All Hail the twitpack of BlogHer!
@amygeekgrl
@lauriewrites
@clizbiz
@followzan
@goonsquadsarah
@herbadmother
@javajenn
@JoryDJ
@elisaC
@lisastone
@dtanton
@kalynskitchen
@lauras
@lesliemb
@lizriz
@magpiegirl
@marianiles
@mata_h
@megansmith
@nerdseyeview
@PaulaClare
@professorkim
@PunditMom
@queenofspain
@susanmernit

I seem destined to have back and forth discussions with Steve Hodson, who picked up something I wrote yesterday about becoming more engaged with twitter and friendfeed than I have been. Steve's a really eloquent, persuasive writer, and I was engaged in reading the piece when I got to this statement that just stopped me:
"While blogging has been heralded as the new news medium there are those of the early adopter crowd who have used blogging as a way for them to have conversations but blogging was never meant to be the end point where they would stay. In the meantime though they attracted the most attention and as a result those of us that wanted to make blogging a career had to work even harder to get noticed."

So, did Steve just say the following:

• People who started blogging a few years ago (2003 for me) are making it hard for people like Steve to get noticed?
• Non-professional bloggers (like me) should get out of the way of people who want to be professional bloggers (like Steve?)
• and, finally
• Those old folks in the early adopter crowd didn't really have the committment to keep blogging, unlike Steve who is called to the vocation so deeply he wants to make his living from it?

Say it ain't so, you of short vision and big hubris, who make lots of silly and incorrect assertions here.

• First of all dude, what is a "professional" blogger? Someone who wants to live on the AdSense pennies they collect? Someone who starts a blog publishing network?
• Second, you're bitching because there are people who started blogging before you who get in the way of your getting noticed? Bah!  Blogging is a  cream rises to the top process, not a who's the best looking dude of the three left on the desert island. Scarcity does not relate to quality, face life and take a deep breath. (Your friend Corvida is a great example of that--she's super talented and now widely read--and when did she start, six months ago?)
• You imply that the writing that non "professional" bloggers do just makes noise, and you say tha FF and twitter make it  easier for "professional" bloggers to rise above the noise because those loud fools just go over there. Steve, this sounds alot like the "I belong to a special priesthood and you stay away from my clubhouse" that old time journalists did  and as such it is utter bullshit.

Summary of what Susan thinks:

• Steve is a smart guy with good ideas whose blog I enjoy.
• This particular post is full of bull hooey and mistaken assertions.

For the past four years, my pattern has been to get up early, have breakfast, check email, read, blog, and walk the dog, not always in that order. Now, that's changing.

Getting up early, check; walking the dog, check; eating breakfast, check--but I'm not blogging. Instead, I'm checking twitter, frendfeed and my email, then switching to facebook.

At that point, I'm 40 minutes into my allotted hour + 10, so this is definitely a behavior-changing pattern.

Here's where the shifts are I want to note and talk about:
a) Relying on social network connections for news.  Jerry Yang might resign? Someone tweeted the link.

b) Treating discourses more like transactions--getting short snippets of broadcast info from people works well in twitter, friendfeed comments.

c) Email is spam and items that need discussion. Notes on wire frames for a remote project need email--meeting for lunch should not (even if it still does.)

d) Blogging is for sharing longer and more thoughtful items (don't fit in a tweet or a bookmark), and posting digital assets--sound.video, images--that don't fit in a twit or SMS format.

Of course, I am still blogging pretty much daily and wil continue to do so, but I'm probably typical of alot of people for whom the blog(which replaced the newspaper online) is no longer the information source I rush to in the morning--now I go to my virtual communities, where people not only tell me how they are, they tell me what they are paying attention to.

How has your attention shifted? Do you fit this pattern? Have another one? Share, please.

"Catering to the need for intellectual stimulation is a little nebulous, but obvious at the same time. Designing the APIs in a particularly elegant way will naturally help bring in the best and the brightest engineers; throwing together something that barely does the job will inevitably turn off the elite. One subtler example: creating "simple" and "power developer" APIs will help the newcomer developers get up to speed very quickly, but not rob the advanced ones of the full power of the platform.

It's worth pointing out that ultimately, until non-advertising business models are devised for social applications (and probably even after they are) valuable distribution (reach + frequency) is going to be the main underlying goal for all developers, commercial and otherwise. The examples above simply illustrate what the platform can do to refine the definition of "valuable distribution" for the developers."

--Max Levchin, Slide, writing about motivating developers in social media applications, aka "games."

User 21 has a nifty post with an analysis of the top 250 most followed people on FriendFeed, ans according to the chart, I'm number 34, which makes me the 4th most followed woman and  in the upper 15% over all.

This is flattering, but I have a few observations about it:

• Most of the people in the top 50 are all subscribed to most of the people in the top 100, so there is an info-junkies skew going on here.
• If the bottom of the 250 are people with 264 people and the top is 19,000, there's not as much of a long tail as one would think--which also suggests this application hasn't penetrated far beyond the web 2.0 digerati world, yet.
• Is FF building a new market or taking people from micro-blogging ( think the latter, mostly).
• Will the rate of growth slow as we work past the digerati, or is a second and third way of adoption coming? (What would tip it?)
  

Russell Beattie: Why  open-source identi.ca can't scale
rabble: leaving yahoo (great post with sharp observations, like: "Maybe at some point i'll sit down and write about the relationship the reform movement part of yahoo had with the mothership. While i tried to make things better, i'm not sure that improving the quality of a fortune 500 company is really my cup of tea.")
Sarah Dopp: OpenQueerMic--new host, new blo--July 11th event in SO
Dating in groups: