'Social Networking' the 3rd Leg of Ballmer's Online Gambit

A while back Steve Ballmer was taking about Facebook being a fad. Microsoft, of course ultimately invested an extraordinary 15 Billion in them which should signal their commitment to the social networking space, but I noticed the following statement from his email to the troops after walking away from this Micro-Yahoo deal that cements it as a priority in their online strategy:

Ultimately, our goal is to build the industry-leading business in search, online advertising, media, and social networking.

So naturally I think back to the Microsoft/Digg rumors....While Digg is primarily a "social news" site it has social networking value to be sure. I wonder if Microsoft will still be considering Digg if they really walk away or force Yahoo to commit hari kari.

Digg Drops it Price to Entice Microsoft, Google.

If Michael Arrington's sources are correct, my beloved social news site, digg.com is the target of buyout offers from both Microsoft and Google (!) It's been rumored for a long time that Digg was for sale but evidently Digg dropped their price and Microsoft became interested at what Arrington reports as a $200-230 Million price.

Attack of the Comments!

Oh the irony and the agony.


Daniel Lyons, the real author behind the satirical blog, "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs," has been posting out-of-character, as himself since Saturday. He is claiming that in the wake of the "agreed" shutdown of Think Secret, now Apple has contacted him directly with a similar offer. According to Dan, as soon as he posted about that, Apple threatened to sue him, even sending him a complete list of his own assets. All on a Saturday, no less.

The comments on these posts spiked, and he even had to post that moderation was turned off. Naturally many of the pseudo-mothership faithful are coming unglued, crying outrage, and some literally flaming Apple and Steve Jobs himself.

One commenter actually pasted this correspondence from an email exchange with one sjobs@apple.com:

--
On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:01 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:

I'm an admitted Apple fanboy, but I can't say I admire this. I would have thought you all would have appreciated the affectionate satire rather than being unaccountable assholes.

Gary Baldwin


--
On Dec 22, 2007, at 5:29 PM, Steve Jobs wrote:

What, praytell, are you talking about?


--
On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:

I'm not sure who I've reached here, but in the interest of finishing what you start, this is what I'm referring to:

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/12/thanks-for-your-support.html


--

I think this is all a joke. And I think you fell for it.

Steve

Now there are people posting that they are really smoking at being duped for defending FSJ. After all, they can't be blamed for acting like rabid dogs & sending nasty hate mail. Fake Steve made them do it. (He is insanely great, after all)

The irony here is that there is something to be kinda pissed about in all this, and it's not about being "duped" (although that is friggin hilarious.)

It's that a real blog, Think Secret, was under threat of serious litigation and was essentially shut down by Apple in spite of being defended by the EFF.

That was actually a *real event* ...and so naturally it got a collective yawn from the blogesphere. This 'fake' injustice on the other hand, that's whipping everyone into a frenzy. A good case of hypocrisy or injustice, real-or-not, generally gets the blogesphere salivating like Pavlovian dog. Dan knows this. In this case, they took the fake flame bait over the real stuff.

But like all great satire, there actually is some real ham in this sandwich. The agony is that is doesn't ever seem to get eaten.

What do Ron Paul and Hannah Montana have in Common?

Looking at Google's year-end Zeitgeist, it's seems evident that both are memes whose relative popularity online eclipses what it is off.

Ron Paul is far and away, the most searched-for Presidential candidate surpassing even Fred Thompson, Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton.

"Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, told Forbes.com that Ron Paul's popularity was surprising, but his online campaign 'shows what an effective tool the Internet is. He's not nearly as covered [in MSM] as Clinton or Obama, but he has marketed himself online. He's using the Internet to his advantage.'"

Over in showbiz, Disney TV/Pop star, Hannah Montana (Mylie Cyrus) and her bubblegum-music Tour are more searched for than that of the most popular rock band in the world (just off of the highest grossing tour in history, ever), The Rolling Stones.



While delving into the disparity between popularity online vs. offline was outside the purview of the Forbes article, in the case of Paul, Infowars calls it a blacklisting by the mainstream media. (No surprise coming from the ever-conspiratorial InfoWars)

I think it has more to do with Paul's consistent, but stridently Libertarian leanings. His anti-war message, really resonates with a lot of people, but so many of his other views are simply way too far out of the mainstream for him to get real traction there.

Howard Dean and Ned Lamont's losses showed that having a huge "net roots" presence simply isn't enough. You need MSM mind share too. While nowhere near as huge as The Rolling Stones, Hannah at least has more mainstream media exposure than Dr. Paul. But she's a kid's TV star...He's a presidential candidate.

Ultimately, both their online popularity (as measured by google) seems disproportionate to their relative popularity offline.


digg story

The Opt-Out of a Century

Before we finally let go of the Facebook Beacon saga, and put that nightmare to rest (or at least until they violate their user base's privacy again), there's one blog post worth re-looking at, just for a laugh, from Nick Carr. It's from November 6th 2007, the momentous centennial on which everything in the known universe changed...and Beacon was announced.

“Once every hundred years media changes," boy-coder turned big-thinker Mark Zuckerberg declared today at the Facebook Social Advertising Event in New York City. And it's true. Look back over the last millennium or two, and you'll see that every century, like clockwork, there's been a big change in media. Cave painting lasted a hundred years, and then there was smoke signaling, which also lasted a hundred years, and of course there was the hundred years of yodeling, and then there was the printing press, which was invented almost precisely 100 years ago, and so forth and so on up to the present day - the day that Facebook picked up the 100-year torch and ran with it.

Just read Nick's post. It's even better now than it was a month ago.

On Being a New Media Douchebag

I first saw the term "New Media Douchebag" in a digg description on Thanksgiving Day by Pete Cashmore, blogger behind 'New Media' blog, Mashable.

I think this is hilarious; There's sure to be something that offends everyone!

Google thinks RSS is sexy.

Since 2005 evidentially, but it appeared on Digg and The Googlesystem Blog again today.

It's been said that by adopting the this as an icon, it might help spread the use of RSS & syndication technologies beyond its present base of more advanced internet users.

Google Search for "rss icon" yeilds this:



click here for RSS?