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A few brief thoughts that occurred to me while cruising down I-94/cutting the grass/trying to fall asleep:

• Should Michael Vick return to the NFL, I think it’s incumbent on fans in opposing cities to start singing Who Let the Dogs Out. In fact I’m working on the theory that the people behind this song knew this was coming and wrote the song specifically for this purpose.
• I’m concerned for the doctors who performed Dick Cheney’s heart procedure. Staring into the black abyss that used to be where Cheney’s soul once existed could not have been good for them.

LOTD: 7/20/07

• Well, I’ve got to say that I was certainly surprised to hear this news about Irina Slutsky leaving PodTech, but perhaps it shouldn’t be that shocking. In any case, good luck, Irina! (TB)
• @tombiro: I especially liked her “I just got fired!” Tweet. But where’s the commentary from her notable coworkers? [1 min ago from MovableType] (CT)
• The Tribune Co. and others are balking at a new rule from the NFL that would require photographers covering games to wear red vests adorned with the logo of the official camera company of the league. Between this and the 45-second rule for online video, the NFL seems to be actively searching for ways to honk off the news media. (CT)
• Speaking of the Trib, the flagship Chicago paper has been given an online overhaul that manages to amount to very little from what I’ve been able to see. (CT)

Looking for a CEO gig?

Ross Mayfield posted today about how he’s looking for the “CEO 2.0″ for Socialtext, and that he’d be stepping into the Chairman and President roles, and is looking to put a new face in that driver’s seat at the wiki service provider. I’m psyched to see where this goes, as it has the potential to a) show some usage of a social network in LinkedIn, which Mayfield has asked people to contact him through in this case, and b) be a solid example of publicly soliciting input on the growth of a business.

Good luck to Ross in his re-fangled role at Socialtext, and if any of you know someone (or are interested yourself) go check it out at Ross’ blog / on LinkedIn.

He’s more machine now than man

Murdoch’s Arrival Worries Journal Employees – New York Times

I have this very clear image of WSJ employees running around before Murdoch’s arrival at the building wearing oblong helmets and trying to reinforce the doors, only to have them cut through by Murdoch’s minions. That of course leads to a firefight the employees ultimately lose, only to have Murdoch himself stride in and step over their bodies before choking the last guy left alive to try and find out what the password to the computer mainframe is.

But maybe that’s just me.

Getting slapped in the Facebook

If I were Facebook (and if Facebook were a person and not a collection of HTML code) about a month and a half I ago I probably would have felt like I was sitting on the top of the social media heap. Sure, my market share still trailed MySpace’s by a significant margin but people seemed to love my cleaner interface, more efficient tools and especially my willingness to let people develop their own widgets to use with me. It was a great time to be a social network.

If I were Facebook just last week I’d be wondering where I it was I had just woken up and why I only had an extra pair of socks and a copy of Grapes of Wrath on me.

After an initial burst of positive publicity for Facebook as it became the darling of the social media space the tide seems to have shifted drastically. Where once people were praising the way it was allowing developers to add widgets and other features at will, now there’s a backlash going on about how it’s a “walled garden” and doesn’t let people out. It’s almost as if Facebook once completely open to search engines and such and then decided to shut the doors.

But that’s not the case. The fact that Facebook sends you an email alerting you to the fact that someone has written on your Wall but that you have to login to see that message is not new. It’s functionality that, at least to my knowledge, has been around since forever on the site. And why are we surprised by that, when so much of the discussion we have revolves around engagement value and pageviews as a sign of success?

I think the seemingly newly formed consensus that Facebook’s content-in/nothing-out model is a bad thing is more a symptom of groupthink than anything else. I think it was about two weeks ago when I started seeing one or two people say they were frustrated in their attempts to export contacts or some such from Facebook into another application. That evolved quickly into people decrying the existence of such closed ecosystems, as if Facebook and other such sites were going to bring down the very Web2.0 world they helped to foster.

As participants in the discussion it’s important that we make sure we’re not falling victim to just piling on someone else’s legitimate point in order to make ourselves appear so cutting edge or smart in a way that only we ourselves can fully appreciate. There are things that Facebook could be doing better, yeah, but let’s actually discuss what they are and how the company can achieve those goals in a way that’s consistent with the brand. There are things that a lot of companies could be doing better. Read TechCrunch for a week and you’ll see all sorts of new start-ups that claim to do X better than MySpace or iTunes or YouTube or any of the other established heavy-hitters. If you find a deficiency in the tools you’re using, take some time and peruse the alternatives to find one that more closely fits the experience you’d like to have.

Be warned, though: What you like the best might not be where the cool kids and A-listers are hanging out currently. So your choices are to hang with the in crowd or pave your own way.

LOTD: 7/18/07

• I know it’s more of an advertisement in Thrillist’s Allied Info, but I’m very impressed by the fact that Wendy’s was smart enough to utilize the newsletter’s services to do outreach for its Baconator. (TB)
• JupiterMedia just paid $20 million in cash for MediaBistro. I hope the focus on the site’s job postings service, a major reason it presented an purchase target, doesn’t mean the excellent blogs it produces are ignored. (CT)
• If you participate in multiple fantasy sports leagues you’ll be happy about the arrival of ScreamingSports, which lets you manage all those teams from one social-networking based interface. [via TechCrunch] (CT)

LOTD 7/17/07

• Mario Sundar draws upon his own experience with beginning a corporate blog for LinkedIn to define the ten steps that need to be ironed out when deciding to begin a corporate blog. (CT)
• A new study has shown up that advises marketers trying to reach teens and young adults to utilize the media those in that demographic are using. The findings point out that word-of-mouth is increasingly shifting for these kids to the online world, where they leave comments on social networks and other such tools. (CT)
• The same sort of conclusions are at the heart of another study that shows newspapers are increasingly being ignored by young people. Moreover, these people aren’t following the news at all, regardless of medium, but newspapers are especially taking a hit because it’s a high-engagement media that doesn’t allow for very much superficiality. (CT)

Biro now taking his directives from zombies

[09:24] Tom: we need brains.

[09:24] Tom: BRAINS!

Creating irrelevancy

Zillow has unveiled a service that, quite frankly, is so obvious it’s a wonder no one thought of this before. The site, which takes together publicly available information to give you an idea of how much a home is roughly worth, is now getting into the hyperlocal news game. The idea is that people who are looking at a neighborhood’s home prices would also be extraordinarily interested in the happenings in that neighborhood, as well as interested in insights on businesses, churches and other features in the area.

This is the kind of service that real estate agents have provided for a long time now but this new service from Zillow brings with it the authenticity that has made consumer-generated content so attractive to people. By creating a hub that brings together home value information and insights and opinions from the people on the ground the site really has the opportunity to take its services to the next level and create an invaluable resource for home shoppers.

Department of Probably Purely Coincidental News Stories

• AdAge: Down is the New Flat for Magazines
• MediaBuyerPlanner: Newspapers Suffer Most in Ad Dollars Lost to the Internet
• Creative Loafing: Old media meets new realities at the AJC
• Jon Fine/BW: When Do You Stop the Presses?

I’m sure there’s absolutely new trend that can be determined, no matter how hard you might look, by the appearance of these stories, which only represent what I saw in one day. Move along. Nothing to see here…