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Some thoughts on the growing convergence between the social web and the performance based marketing world:

http://seesmic.com/Standalone.swf?video=Ih698UAwnz

Nathania Johnson tagged me to give my response on the best way to measure social media marketing.

Here’s my response (via Seesmic):

http://seesmic.com/Standalone.swf?video=1QDKMZEzGq

Even though I love my data and am vigilant in keeping backups and offline storage of emails, pics, docs, etc I do use and enjoy the wide range of Google products. This morning, the Wall Street Journal had a piece on new details of the supposedly eventual release of Google’s “GDrive” or “Platypus” or “MyStuff” which would allow you to sync up your data in the cloud and access it from anywhere (including mobile) in a safe and cheap environment.

Marshall Kirkpatrick says this could be a game changer and gives three very good reasons why in a solid post that you should consider when thinking about the future of the web and the data we produce and construct in our individual molecular social graphs:

It’s easy to be cynical about the details coming from the Wall St. Journal this morning. It’s easy wonder whether Google will ever bring its storage product to market, whether it can be trusted given the number of times its own company blogs have been hacked and whether it’s even a good idea given the near omniscience the company will soon possess. I believe, though, that important new information is coming out about the GDrive and the product will play a fundamentally different roll in our lives than existing online storage products purport to.

ReadWriteWeb – GDrive: Three Ways It Could Be a Game Changer

The always informative and wise Jeremiah Owyang has a top 10 list of posts regarding social media strategies. This is a must-bookmark post:

I’m answering a lot of questions and see myself referring to the same blog posts and concepts over and over. There’s a few posts that I recommend that you read, some of them were published a few months ago, but are starting to become very relevant. In fact, I’ll send this post to a few clients that need to get up to speed…

Ten Web Strategy Blog Posts I wish you’d read

A few backs the continual innovative team at Zoho announed the integration of Google Gears into the Zoho Writer web app. Zoho Writer is analogous to Google Docs and similar online word processing applications. The first cut had offline viewing facility alone. However, this release pushes the online word processing space ahead as it allows for offline editing.

Here’s a video from Zoho explaining more details:
http://zoho.com/zohowriter-zoho/zohowriter-zoho.html

Robert Scoble recorded a 13 minute video laying out his main beefs with Amazon’s new ebook Kindle reader. Most of his points pertained to the Kindle’s poor design (which I agree with). However, one of his points include:

4. No ability to send electronic goods to anyone else. I know Mike Arrington has one. I wanted to send him a gift through this of Alan Greenspan’s new book. I couldn’t. That’s lame.

While the Kindle (and ebook readers in general) is still a very niche product, it is interesting to see that social network sharing via gifts and commodity purchases is becoming seen as a required standard feature for new devices or platforms in this increasingly “socially networked” world. There’s a reason Facebook applications that encourage sending gifts, etc become popular quickly even though they require cash… people like sending gifts.

Look for this trend to continue.

Looks like YouTube is down…

Yes, YouTube appears to be down currently. Looks like it’s down at least 30 minutes now (as of 12:45pm Eastern) based on Corsin’s note. I’ve received nine emails and a batch of Twitter messages asking if it’s down so here is my confirmation that it’s down for me as well.

Try out Magnify.net.

It’s back 🙂

Good stuff from Tara Hunt:

q: What do you call someone who joins communities, adds friends and generally uses social networking tools to promote their own interests solely?

a: a community freeloader

Read her explanation here.

I’m not a “video person” but I am liking Seesmic a great deal these days…

http://seesmic.com/Standalone.swf?video=21wVEhaXI1

Mary Hudson says hello to Seesmic:

http://seesmic.com/Standalone.swf?video=9p408MFDrF

If Mark Cuban were to hypothetically run for president in 2008, he might want to consider Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens for his running mate based on these types of sentiments…

In an open letter to Internet service providers published earlier this week, billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban calls for telecoms to put an end to peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing. Cuban expresses concerns that P2P “freeloaders” are clogging the tubes with commercial content. His letter doesn’t focus on piracy, however, and instead primarily attacks companies that use P2P for legitimate commercial applications. We’re always interested to read the musings of Mr. Cuban, but this time we’re pretty sure he’s missed the point…

This argument comes from the man who funded Grokster’s legal defense back in the day and invested approximately $1.7 million in P2P company Red Swoosh. Cuban has been focused on the problems of bandwidth to the home for some time, however, telling Ars in 2006 that he is in favor of a tiered Internet.

Seriously, how out of touch is Mark Cuban?

Mark Cuban to ISP’s: block all P2P traffic; Ars to Cuban: um, no

Great study on the alarming declines in reading by young adults and college educated adults from the National Endowment for the Arts:

The story the data tell is simple, consistent, and alarming. Although there has been
measurable progress in recent years in reading ability at the elementary school level,
all progress appears to halt as children enter their teenage years. There is a general
decline in reading among teenage and adult Americans. Most alarming, both reading
ability and the habit of regular reading have greatly declined among college graduates.
These negative trends have more than literary importance. As this report makes clear,
the declines have demonstrable social, economic, cultural, and civic implications.

To Read or Not to Read: NEA Study (pdf)

Dave Winer writes today regarding TinyURL’s recent downtime and what it means for the web:

Now that URL length has become an issue for users, it might be even better for designers to view URLs as part of site design. Look at the address for the page for the Wii at Amazon. Wouldn’t it be easier to find if the address were:

http://www.amazon.com/wii

Try clicking on it — it actually works!

Why should a user ever see the longer crappy url?

In other words, url-shortening isn’t just for Twitter users, it’s for everyone. Maybe most people don’t look at the urls, but some do, and maybe more would if they made more sense?

Imagine if web developers would start taking link optimization into account along with search engine optimization. As Winer points out, long link strands are increasingly becoming irrelevant as most people just go to Google if they need a link they can’t remember and click from there.

However, if you’re selling a product or a service, how valuable is it that the link to that product or service have an increasingly easy format and structure for users or customers to remember? Perhaps not valuable for all merchants or advertisers… but potentially very valuable for many.

Expect to hear more about link optimization as the web grows up and grows out to mobile.

We should be listening to what the kids are saying and watching what they are doing as we endeavor to create a better web. Otherwise, we’ll continue to fill the role of typical adults and muck the web up:

Rather than a teacher creating class blogs, and registering all the students one by one, and creating a single feed of their posts, it’s the students who are doing this around their friendship or collaborative work groups. Since the content and mechanism are in the hands of the students we see the same exponential growth in content and delivery that we have seen in the real world net, but have really struggled to harness for education. I’d argue that with increased flexibility in the means of delivery we’d also see increased content creation to mould around all these different media.

Imagine if Facebook took that to heart! There’s wisdom in youth.

Given eBooks or the real thing, I’ll gladly take my 1.0 paper books…

“If you would know how a man treats his wife and his children, see how he treats his books.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Having become a father just six weeks ago, I’m already recognizing the patterns of behavior that my daughter and I share.  While she’s not playing with Barbie’s yet, she’s becoming very tactile as she continues to try and figure out this strange new world that she’s joined.

I love my toys.  My toys these days are phones and laptops and all sorts of geeky gizmo’s.  This week, I got my first Macbook Pro and I’m using it for productivity reasons while also treating it like a toy.  I’m sure Mary Hudson will do the same as she grows and starts to put the toys she enjoys playing with to use as learning tools.

So, my question… is there a difference between toys and tools?  Can a hammer be both an instrument of creativity and enjoyment as well as a way to get things done?

Personally, I don’t see a difference between the two.  Hopefully my experience as a father will either confirm or prove wrong my theory.

Thought this was funny (and telling) for Valleywag readership (though Robert Scoble’s blog is at "Elementary School" level):

If you’re wondering, this site is at "Genius Level."  Whatever that means. 

The Blog Readability Test. What level of education is required to understand your blog?