All Things Digital

Google calls its latest data portability effort Friend Connect, but a better name might have been AdWords Connect. Because, like most Google (GOOG) initiatives, that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it? Connecting people to ads? And there’s a lot more opportunity for that when the Web itself becomes a social network. Which is exactly the sort of thing you hope for when those unobtrusive little contextual ads you sell are as ubiquitous as street signs on the Web.

Designed to help Web publishers easily add social-networking features to their sites, Friend Connect requires just a snippet of code to bring social features to a site along with a means of coordinating them with other social networks like Facebook, Plaxo and Google’s Orkut. It’s another in a recent string of data-portability efforts that hope to apply the distributed model to social networking and put an end to its so-called “walled gardens.”

“The distributed model has worked well for the Web,” David Glazer, Google director of engineering, told Outside the Lines’ Dan Farber. “That is what the Web does–many points of light loosely coupled and massively distributed, allowing users to connect to pages of information. Now it is working to connect people to other people.”

And all of them to Google AdWords, of course. More Internet usage. More ad revenue.

This morning, Peter Chernin, the chief operating officer of News Corp. (NWS) (which owns Dow Jones and this site), acknowledged that Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace, will fall short of its goal of generating $1 billion in revenue for fiscal 2008. A surprising shortfall for a division that operates the strongest social-networking offering on the Web.

But not to worry, MySpace has a solution for that. It’s just one that lacks an obvious monetization strategy. It’s called Data Availability and it’s a way for MySpace members to share and sync profile data across partner sites–starting with Yahoo (YHOO), eBay (EBAY), Twitter and Photobucket. “The walls around the garden are coming down–the implementation of Data Availability injects a new layer of social activity and creates a more dynamic Internet,” enthused Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace, in a statement. “We, alongside our Data Availability launch partners, are pioneering a new way for the global community to integrate their social experiences Web-wide.”

That’s all well and good. But how about pioneering a new way to, you know, make money off that integration? Data portability is wonderfull and all. But so is revenue. And right now, MySpace’s Data Availability initiative doesn’t include any advertising deals.

Who says Google (GOOG) is hoarding Silicon Valley’s tech talent? In August of 2007, Gideon Yu, a Valley train-hopper with stints at Yahoo (YHOO) and then YouTube, resigned from his position at the video-sharing site shortly after it was acquired by the search engine to become CFO of Facebook. A few months later, Benjamin “bling” Ling, described as one of “Larry and Sergey’s golden boys,” left Google to run Facebook’s platform program. Then this past March, Sheryl Sandberg, Google’s vice president of global online sales and operations, bailed to join the social network as chief operating officer. Ethan Beard, Google’s director of social media, followed shortly after, taking a job as Facebook’s director of business development.

Now another prominent Googler has train-hopped to the popular social-networking company as well. As first reported by BoomTown, Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications and public affairs at Google, is leaving the search sovereign to become Facebook’s vice president of communications and public policy.

“[Elliot Schrage] will be responsible for developing the key messages we want people to understand about our products, our business and the growing global importance of social networking and what we do,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an email to employees announcing the hire. “The goal here is to help people understand how the Internet can strengthen people’s relationships. Elliot will direct our efforts to work with users, media, governments and other entities around the world to ensure that Facebook’s policies are transparent, responsive, effective and are recognized as being those things. … This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while. Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness and honest internal communications.”

“Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness, and honest internal communications”?

Clearly, Zuckerberg meant “build from the ground up a culture that values transparency, openness and honest internal communications.” Because it’s only been about six months since the Beacon fiasco, which demonstrated how grievously the company was lacking in those qualities (see “DiaperFetishFactory.com Is Sending a Story to Your Profile,” “Epicurious Has Added a Potential Privacy Violation to Your Facebook Profile,” “Fiascobook,” and “Fiascobook, Redux“).

Perhaps if Facebook recruits enough former Googlers, it too will be able to lay claim to a silly informal motto like “Don’t Be Evil.”

If YouTube aims to someday host every music video ever made, as co-founder Steve Chen once claimed, it better get crackin’. Because the market’s getting crowded.

This morning PluggedIn Media launched a new service for streaming HD-quality music videos. Backed by Overbrook Entertainment–Will “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” Smith’s production and management company–PluggedIn will offer some 10,000 videos from EMI (EMI.L), Vivendi (VIV.PA) and Sony BMG (SNE), along with the standard music-site fare–artist bios, users playlists and whatnot. That being the case, how does PluggedIn hope to differentiate itself from the competition? “We look at all the changes shaping online entertainment and see massive opportunity for lots of companies to appreciate and forge really viable consumer connections,” said CEO Jeff Somers. “We think what will separate us from what is out there today is an unbelievable high-quality viewing experience, matched with in-depth content and community tools.”

Perhaps. But it will also create dangerous rivalries with some powerful competitors. With its social-networking features, PluggedIn will soon find itself in direct competition with MySpace Music (NWS) as well as Hulu (GE).

In order to build the necessary respect and win the mindshare of the Internet community, I recommend a recipe not unlike the one we’ve used with our TCP/IP efforts: embrace, extend, then innovate. Phase 1 (Embrace): All participants need to establish a solid understanding of the infostructure and the community–determine the needs and the trends of the user base. Only then can we effectively enable Microsoft system products to be great Internet systems. Phase 2 (Extend): Establish relationships with the appropriate organizations and corporations with goals similar to ours. Offer well-integrated tools and services compatible with established and popular standards that have been developed in the Internet community.”

–J Allard, corporate vice president of design and development for the Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division, “Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet,” 1994

In February, Microsoft (MSFT) surprised industry watchers and embraced the idea of data portability, throwing its support behind OpenID, a decentralized digital-identity protocol.

This morning came the inevitable extension of that idea, the announcement of a partnership with five social networks on a new data-portability strategy. LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo (TWX) and Facebook have all agreed to use Mirosoft’s Windows Live Contacts API to, in the words of John Richards, director of Microsoft’s Windows Live Platform, “create a safe, secure two-way street for users to move their relationships between our respective services.”

In other words “Windows Live Messenger.” Certainly, it’s hard not to look at Microsoft’s announcement that way, given the simultaneous debut of invite2messenger.net, a new Microsoft Web site through which people can invite friends from participating social networks to join their Windows Live Messenger contact list.

“In completing this two-way street, both Windows Live and our partners have paid special attention to relationship context and privacy management in order to create the best possible user experience,” explains Richards. “We understand that just because people have a friend relationship with a contact on one social network, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want that same relationship on another network. To preserve the context of the relationship, we are requiring that relationships be re-established in each experience with permission from the friend or contact, rather than automatically storing the data. We encourage you to visit www.invite2messenger.net to see these ideas in action, and to invite your Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, LinkedIn and Tagged friends to join you on the world’s largest instant messaging network, Windows Live Messenger.”

Would something added to AOL, or AOL added to something else, make it stronger and more valuable? We can’t rule it out and we wouldn’t. It’s our obligation to make sure AOL gets into whatever configuration that makes it the strongest and most valuable.”

–Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes

Google (GOOG) won’t be acquiring Bebo any time soon. Unless it’s willing to buy Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL first. This morning AOL announced plans to acquire the social-networking site. Price tag: $850 million–cash.

It’s a sizable and unexpected deal for AOL (talk about unlikely buyers …), which has itself been rumored to be an acquisition target. Bebo, which claims a global membership of about 40 million users, will expand AOL’s world-wide reach to some 80 million unique users–many of them in the 13-to-24 demographic. And if AOL is lucky, it will jump-start its sluggish advertising business.

“This is a tremendous acquisition and one I think is game-changing for AOL–it puts us squarely as a leader in social media,” AOL chairman and CEO Randy Falco said during a press conference this morning. “Bebo will be the cornerstone of our strategy to transform the online experience for advertisers, media companies and consumers. Bebo is the best social media asset out there. It’s a true pioneer in the space, has the most engaged audience on the Web and has seen tremendous growth since its founding less than three years ago. When you combine Bebo’s worldwide users with those who use AIM and ICQ, we reach around 80 million. … We will be a social media powerhouse.”

What does this mean for the Microsoft (MSFT)/Yahoo (YHOO)/AOL love triangle?

If Fouad Mourtada spends the next three years in prison for creating a fake profile of a Moroccan prince on Facebook, it won’t have been the social-networking site that put him there. Facebook insists it didn’t help the Moroccan government identify the 26-year-old engineer as the author of crown prince Moulay Rachid’s fake Facebook page. Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker said in a statement that the company shares information with law enforcement and other government agencies only “when it has a good-faith belief it is legally obligated to do so.” But with regard to the bogus profile that led to Mourtada’s arrest, “Facebook has shared no such information with the Moroccan authorities,” she said.

So if not Facebook, then who? Advocacy group Reporters Without Borders suspects Mourtada’s ISP, Maroc Telecom. “Did the police get his computer’s IP address? And if so, how? We have asked the ISP, Maroc Telecom, in which the French company Vivendi is a shareholder, to provide us with the relevant information.”

Facebook shed some 400,000 members between December and January in the United Kingdom. This according to new figures from Nielsen Online, which charted a 5% decline in U.K. traffic month-to-month.

Which begs the question: Is Facebook nearing its saturation point? Is enthusiasm for the social-networking phenom finally wearing off? Have we all been spammed by the ironically named “Funwall” one time too many? Are the site’s privacy issues finally taking their toll? Or are its zombified members too busy seeking human flesh to bother updating their profiles?

Or were they simply on winter holiday?

That last scenario seems the most obvious explanation. December and January are the months at issue here. And Nielsen’s figures show that there are 712% more Facebook users than a year ago. Still, this is the first drop the firm has recorded in Facebook’s user numbers in the U.K. since the site became large enough to track. There wasn’t a similar drop in usage last year. Or the year prior. So maybe there is something more here. The early beginnings of a long-term erosion, perhaps?

“One month of falling audiences doesn’t spell the decline of Facebook or social networking,” said Nielsen’s Alex Burmaster. “However, most of the leading social networks are less popular in the U.K. than they were a year ago. It was inevitable that early growth rates couldn’t be sustained and the larger networks have been plateauing over the last few months.”

Seems the leading social networks to which Burmaster refers were also less popular in the U.S. According to the latest stats from comScore, Facebook attracted 33.9 million unique visitors stateside in January–down 2% percent from 34.7 million in December. That’s a decline of approximately 800,000 users. Again, this drop could also be chalked up to Seasonal Facebook Defection Disorder. Or not. After all, it’s not like we haven’t seen this sort of thing before. Remember Friendster?

UPDATE: Facebook disputes Nielsen’s metrics. “The number of users for Facebook continues to climb in the U.K.,” the company said. “Our internal monthly active user numbers rose between December and January in the U.K. and are now at more than 8.3 million. Facebook tracks active monthly users, rather than registered users or unique visitors. Active users reflect those who have used the site in the past 30 days.”

So how many times do you think Intel CEO Paul Otellini is going mention Moore’s Law during his keynote at CES (which I’m live-blogging from the ballroom of the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas)?

I’m betting once every seven minutes for its duration. Any takers?

Here’s what Otellini said and did, in reverse chronological order:

5:34 p.m.: Otellini closes with a quote from Bob Noyce: “Don’t be encumbered by history. Go off and do something wonderful.”
And that’s it. (Parting shot: All the demos were run on Windows XP, not Vista.)
5:33 p.m.: “As the Internet becomes more powerful, more context-aware, more and more industries will be transformed. Why? Because consumers will demand a seamless experience.” Increasingly, the consumer will be the creator of content, Otellini concludes, with the Internet acting as a distribution outlet. (And Intel providing the silicon, of course.)
5:32 p.m.: Otellini says what we just saw was the leading edge of personal Internet development, but just a glimpse of what reality will be. Otellini notes that there are other applications for this tech as well: medical, disaster and rescue, etc.
5:30 p.m.: Otellini announces the first-ever virtual Smash Mouth: Steve Harwell performing live in motion-capture booth, band performing live over Internet. All members on screen represented as avatars. Very cool. Audience is clearly impressed.
5:29 p.m.: Organic rep notes that the company relies heavily on Intel quad-core processors.
5:27 p.m.: Otellini brings out a rep from Organic Motion, a motion-capture outfit. The company has developed a motion-capture system that requires no specialized suits, just an array of cameras. Steve Harwell strolls over to a motion-capture booth.
5:25 p.m.: Bigstage.com will launch in Q2 of this year. “Put the ‘digital you’ in all your entertainment experiences.” Otellini calls up a video representation of Steve Harwell’s neighborhood. Navigates to Harwell’s old house. Opens the garage, and there’s his band represented by avatars. Avatars are live representations of the band mates, they’re speaking and gesturing in real-time in response to questions.
5:23 p.m.: Now imagine what happens when you take these avatars and extend them with video. Immersive video. (Ha. Video of avatar Otellini performing in Smash Mouth’s first video. Audio’s out, but the video is pretty funny.)
5:20 p.m.: Presenter uses software to give Steve Harwell a mohawk, sunglasses and a bull-ring. That’s great, but what can you do with an avatar like this? Why, put it on a digital motorcycle, of course. Presenter gives digital Steve Hawell a new haircut and a new facial expression.
5:18 p.m.: The presenter from Bigstage takes a few photos of Steve Harwell and begins building a “digital Steve.” Digital Steve will apparently be fully animated and can be shared across various social networks. Ah. Digital Steve is bald. He does look like his real-life counterpart, though.
5:17 p.m.: Turns out that while Steve Harwell was quite impressed with eJamming, he would have been more impressed if it had offered him an avatar.
5:15 p.m.: Steve Harwell from Smash Mouth is very impressed, notes that the other members of the band were all playing from different locations. Harwell adds that the service heralds an era in which new bands arise from online collaborations like the one we just witnessed.
5:13 p.m.: Otellini brings up some live music currently on the service, then calls up Steve Harwell from Smash Mouth to demo the service. Turns out Harwell’s band mates are at this very moment jamming on eJamming. (What an incredible coincidence.) Wow. If this is truly live–as they say it is–it’s pretty damn impressive. (The service, not the performance …)
5:11 p.m.: Otellini brings out Alan Glickman from eJamming, a social-networking portal for musicians. The service allows musicians to meet one another and also play music together–live–in near real time.
5:10 p.m.: Now, Otellini’s talking about the evolution of social networks: “In the future, environments like Second Life will be much more immersive.”
5:09 p.m.: To interact with the Internet’s vast resources, we need new natural interfaces. Otellini cites Nintendo’s Wii wand as an example of an evolved human interface.
5:07 p.m.: Moving on to WiMax, which Otellini claims will enable the personal Internet. It’s the best solution for wireless media delivery. And it will create the ubiquitous, proactive Internet Intel envisions.
5:05 p.m.: On to Menlow and mobile devices. He pulls out an unreleased Toshiba device running the ultra low-power Menlow chip. Device is running Vista and Adobe Air. Robust applications, nice graphics.
5:04 p.m.: Describing a chip called Canmore–system on a chip optimized for hi-def video and Internet.
5 p.m.: Moving on to Intel’s new 45 nanometer chips. … News flash: a nanometer is really, really, really small. … Uh-oh, he’s talking chip-fab processes … Reminds me of that old Steve Martin routine: “Those of you who aren’t plumbers probably won’t get this and won’t think it’s funny, but I think those of you who are plumbers will really enjoy this. … This lawn supervisor was out on a sprinkler maintenance job and he started working on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom 7-inch gangly wrench. Just then, this little apprentice leaned over and said, ‘You can’t work on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom 7-inch wrench.’ Well, this infuriated the supervisor, so he went and got Volume 14 of the Kinsley Manual, and he reads to him and says, ‘The Langstrom 7-inch wrench can be used with the Findlay socket.’ Just then, the little apprentice leaned over and says, ‘It says sprocket not socket!’ ”
4:59 p.m.: If Intel had built that chip back when it first started it would be about 9 feet wide and consume enough energy to power two households.
4:58 p.m.: Ahhh… here comes the first Moore’s Law reference. … And up pops Gordon Moore on the video screen. Intel’s first chip contained 2,250 transistors, Otellini informs the audience, and its latest quad-core chip has 820 million transistors.
4:57 p.m.: But, Otellini says, there are obstacles to achieving the sort of context-aware computing we just saw, among them silicon and wireless infrastructure.
4:55 p.m.: Otellini notes that processing-power heavy applications like the context-aware computing we just saw demonstrated will require more heavy-duty processors. And that’s of course where Intel comes in.
4:54 p.m.: Now demoing a Web-based program called EveryScape. It looks like a video navigation service. Presenter uses it to take us to Intel’s China office and then to the Great Wall of China. Well, look at that: The device also discovers nearby restrooms.
4:51 p.m.: Woman bikes onstage. Co-presenter asks her for directions and she responds in Chinese. He speaks into the device, asking the woman for directions. The device translates his question into Chinese and speaks it to her. She responds in Chinese and it translates her answer into English–does it pretty quickly, too.
4:50 p.m.: He aims it at a restaurant awning. The device translates its name into English, calls up a menu (also translated into English) and some video reviews as well.
4:49 p.m.: Another presenter joins Otellini onstage. He’s got some sort of mobile Internet device. He aims it at a photo of downtown Beijing behind him, focuses it on a sign written in Mandarin, and the device translates it to English. Very slick.
4:48 p.m.: Push media? No, a more personal Internet. One that’s predictive and context aware.
4:47 p.m.: “Just as MTV evolved beyond music videos, the Internet will continue to drive the evolution of the media industry. In the next evolution of the Internet, the Internet will come to us.”
4:45 p.m.: “Our updated song lyrics highlight a disruptive force that’s going to change the content industry: the Internet.” (Really going out on a limb there, eh, Paul?)
4:44 p.m.: And here comes Paul Otellini … Clearly, he found the video funny. He takes the stage with a giggle.
4:43 p.m.: It’s a music video. “Internet Killed the Compact Disc Star/ Internet Made The Video Star”–sung to the tune of “Video Killed the Radio Star.”
Not a single laugh. Audience looks like the emotionless pod people in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
4:42 p.m.: Oh dear. Keynote opens with a video presentation of “Intel’s Vision of the Future.”
4:39 p.m.: And here comes Gary Shapiro again. Lousy opening act, if you ask me. He even stumbles on the “nanometer.”
4:37 p.m.: Lights dim … and here comes that silly CES advertisement they ran prior to the Gates keynote last night. It’s almost as if the CES producers are purposely trying to put the audience to sleep before the keynote even starts.
4:30 p.m.: Interesting little sidenote before Otellini begins: Intel has distributed questionnaires throughout the packed hall asking attendees to review Otellini’s keynote. A $500 random drawing is the incentive for completing it. Question No. 6: Rate your agreement with this statement on a scale of 1 to 5: Paul Otellini has a clear vision for the future when consumer electronics meets the Internet, he knows what he is talking about and I believe what he said is going happen. (Sadly there’s no “Intel has won its de facto monopoly over the chip market fair and square” question. I’m sure the folks from AMD here would have a field day with that one.)

According to last year’s safely-looking-ahead-to-the-year-to-come lists, 2007 was to be “a year of hyperdisruption for the technology industry”; it was to be “a year of significant developments” and “a year of evolution”; it was to be “a year of invention and innovation,” “a year of experimentation” and “a year of slow, but significant, change”; it was to be “a year of carnage,” but it was also to be “a year of great happiness and multiple blessings.” Above all, 2007 was to be “a busy year for technology.”

Which, as you’ll see below (and in our companion video), is pretty much how it turned out. What follows is Digital Daily’s abridged guide to the year in tech news–a fond reminiscence of what was, and our First Annual Year-End List For Year-End List Haters.

1. Yahoo Shareholders Reject Plan to Tie Executive Compensation to Company’s Crappy Performance
   Well, what do you know: Yahoo’s annual shareholder meeting didn’t conclude with CEO Terry Semel’s head piked on the exclamation point of the Yahoo sign outside company headquarters.

2. I Know It Was You, Fredo. You Broke My Heart. You Broke My Heart!
   Apparently, Fred Anderson is the “Fredo” of the Apple options backdating family.

3. We’ve Asked John Williams to Do a Special Performance of the Theme From “The Poseidon Adventure” for Our Q4 Results
   Who’s programming Microsoft’s on-hold music, Apple’s Phil Schiller? Waiting for the company’s third-quarter earnings call to begin yesterday, those listening in were treated to an instrumental piano version of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” From “Titanic,” the disaster movie.

4. I’m Proud to Say Our New “Soylent Green” iPod Is Made of 100% Biodegradable Greenpeace Activists!
   If you’re going to try to smear Apple for reckless environmental practices, you best have some hard epidemiological and toxicological data on hand, because goofy Photoshop treatments of the company’s marketing materials just can’t stand up to a blow from the Apple PR machine.

5. And Online Display Impressions Soared as More Americans Checked Their AOL Accounts for Old Times’ Sake
   To hear tell from Time Warner executives, the company’s better-than-expected earnings for the first quarter owed quite a bit to gains in online-advertising market share by its AOL Internet division.

6. Web 2.0 Audience in Mirror May Be Smaller Than It Appears
   How ironic is it that Web 2.0–the “participatory Web”–has far fewer participants than its architects would have us believe?

7. And for My Next Trick, I’ll Turn Myself Into a Complete Jackass
   If you’re going to demand that YouTube remove a video to which you object under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it’s probably wise to make sure that you actually understand the DMCA.

8. War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength. DRM Is DCE.
   You can’t put frosting on manure, but HBO’s Chief Technology Officer Bob Zitter isn’t above trying.

9. We’re Naming It the Motorola STNKR, After Our Q1 Earnings …
   Carl Icahn was right. Motorola really is desperate for a new product. How else to explain a patent the company was awarded last month for a “communication device having a scent-release feature and method thereof.”

10. The Frienemy of My Frienemy Is My Enemiend
    If Microsoft is planning an acquisition in the online marketing and advertising space, it better act fast, because if it waits much longer there won’t be anything left to acquire.

11. How Would Monsieur Ellison Like His BEA Served? Mixed in a Bucket With Oracle’s Other Acquisitions?
    Looks like we may be in for another PeopleSoft-esque takeover drama …

12. I’m Just Biding My Time Here Until I Can Quit and Study Whale Feces Full Time
    Given the chance, how would you alter the course of your career? Well, if you worked at Microsoft’s Security Response Center, you might consider taking a job as an Olympic drug tester, a gravity research subject, or a “whale-feces researcher.”

13. Much Like Energy, BS Cannot Be Created or Destroyed, It Can Only Be Changed From One Form to Another
    If Steorn’s perpetual motion effort is anything like its e-commerce venture (and by all accounts things do seem to be going that way), the only thing in its future is insolvency.

14. From Now On, We’ll Be Known as Nlsn/NtRtings
    Looks like vowels won’t be the only accoutrements to be tossed aside in the rise of Web 2.0. The venerable page view is to be abandoned as well.

15. The Defendant Stands Accused of Copyright Infringement, Breach of Contract and Misappropriation of Dumb Luck
    According to popular legend Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg once kept two versions of his business card in his wallet–one with the title CEO, the other with “I’M CEO . . . BITCH.”

16. Well, Here Come YouTube’s Video ID Tools. Guess That Means Godot Will Be Here Any Minute Now
    Google’s apparently finished “educating users about copyright law” and has moved on to the far more important business of making sure not to run afoul of it.

17. Look at It This Way: Now That Yahoo’s an ‘Ecosystem,’ the EPA Can Finally Declare It a Superfund Site
    “Our financial performance is not what we would like to see long-term.” This, from Blake Jorgensen, Yahoo’s chief financial officer who, just six weeks into the job, is already well versed in the company’s fiscal truisms.

18. Gates to Google: My Lyrical Technique Will Leave Your Body Weak
    Much as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates fancies himself untroubled by Google’s incursions into his software empire, they clearly do chafe him a bit.

19. Newest Yahoo Mail Feature: BCC Beijing
    Sure, Yahoo signed China’s “Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry,” a voluntary agreement to monitor and restrict information deemed “harmful” by Beijing, but did it have to take it quite so seriously?

20. Apple: Wham, Bam, Thank You Fanboi
    “I feel like a $200 whore.” That was one iPhone early adopter’s crass assessment of his feelings of self-worth, after Apple unexpectedly cut the price of the device by a third–just two months after it arrived at market.

21. In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing, Sergey’s California King May Be Used as a Flotation Device
    With its onboard hammocks, full-size sofas and California King beds, it’s a wonder Google’s “party plane” has room for scientific instrumentation befitting the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but apparently it does.

22. Act Now and Get a Downgrade to the OS You Really Want, ABSOLUTELY FREE!
    It’s looking more and more like the pent-up demand for Windows Vista we’ve heard so much about this past year is really just pent-up demand for Windows XP.

23. Dude, I Work for Friggin Forbes Magazine. Have You Heard of It?
    The year-long guessing game is over. New York Times reporter Brad Stone has outed Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine, as the author of the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, the satirical blog lampooning Apple’s iconic CEO (See? Told you it wasn’t me).

24. If Facebook’s Worth $15 Billion, Then My Stupid Idea’s Got to Be Good for $10 Mil
    Apparently the vainglory from which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to suffer is communicable and spreading rapidly throughout the social network’s developer community.

25. A Billion Here, a Billion There, and Pretty Soon You’re Talking Real Bollocks
    MySpace is worth $65 billion in the same way that Facebook is worth $15 billion–hypothetically.

26. “Apple Has Destroyed the Music Business”–Not That We Didn’t Try Our Best
    Many, many years ago, when the digital-music business consisted of little else besides Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America’s lawsuits against it, Apple proved that there was indeed a decent business to be had in selling music online for $1 per song.

27. It’s Not an Unpaid Endorsement, It’s a “Social Ad”
    Facebook’s Social Ads aren’t endorsements, they’re a “representation” of user activity.

28. Obama Announces “No Tech Policy Left Behind” Plan
    If Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s is to do the same to its tech-policy issues.

29. Sounds More Like the “Zune of Reading” to Me
    If Jeff Bezos truly hopes to create “the iPod of reading,” observers say he’s going to have to do a hell of a lot better than Amazon’s new Kindle e-book reader.

30. Fiascobook
    What Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lacks in foresight, he certainly makes up for in disingenuous hair-shirt remorse.

You’d think that in this age of social networking and Internet stardom, ego surfing would be a near-compulsion among Web surfers. But according to the latest study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, just 47% of Internet users have searched for themselves online (53% say they’ve searched for someone else).

Not as many as you’d expect, is it? Still, it is double the 22% that ego-surfed back in 2002. “Yes [the number’s] doubled, but it’s still the case that there’s a big chunk of Internet users who have never done this simple act of plugging their name with search engines,” said Pew researcher Mary Madden. “Certainly awareness has increased, but I don’t know it’s necessarily kept pace with the amount of content we post about ourselves or what others post about us.”

Apparently not. The same study found that 61% of adults say they’re not worried about the personal information available about them online.

Facebook threw a well-timed sucker punch at Google’s “Everybody-But-Facebook” OpenSocial initiative this week, extending Facebook Platform–a set of tools that allows developers to build applications for Facebook–to other social-networking sites and platforms.

“[We] want to share the benefits of our work by enabling other social sites to use our platform architecture as a model,” Facebook senior platform manager Ami Vora said in a blog post announcing the move. “In fact, we’ll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms. Of course, Facebook Platform will continue to evolve, but by enabling other social sites to use what we’ve learned, everyone wins–users get a better experience around the Web, developers get access to new audiences, and social sites get more applications. ”

Among the first sites to avail themselves of the Facebook Platform standards was Bebo, an OpenSocial partner. Isn’t that a bit of a slap in the face for Google? Bebo co-founder and CEO Michael Birch says no. When OpenSocial finally launches, Bebo will support it as well. “OpenSocial and the Facebook Platform are clearly different platforms,” Birch told News.com. “Our lazy development team said they couldn’t do both at once.”