[Five] Eight years ago today, Dave Winer wrote: “Every new website begets more websites. If I have one, I want my friend to have one, so I can point to it. And so they can point to my site. Someday I’ll be able to walk a network of friendships, automatically knowing that each of us has mutual friends. It’ll be cool.” His prophecy was called “Billions of websites.” Read the whole thing — it will make your spine tingle.

Glenn Reynolds gave a nice plug for Blogads yesterday. “Now that Google has seen the value of tapping into the blogosphere, I think that a lot of other folks will want to, too.” Blogads “lets advertisers reach select audiences with highly desirable demographics for next to nothing,” writes Glenn.

A friend writes:

A couple of thoughts occurred to me on the Google/Pyra deal. I think it’s good all around, having been to the Googleplex a couple of times and worked with them on XXX. They’re great people, and yes, the food really is that
good.

Firstly, I understand they’re in the runup to their IPO. They have a good cash position and are looking to generate interest. Wouldn’t that mean more purchases of smaller companies at fire-sale prices are on the way? The really interesting question is, who’s around that would make sense for them really?

A while ago I saw something in E&P a couple of weeks ago about their ability – if they wanted to – to turn Google News into a huge aggregator and paid content mediator.

In this way, a Pyra tie-up would give them a leg up on spotting the new “hubs” as you call ’em.

Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if Winer’s talking to one of the SOAP players. Maybe Microsoft themselves?

Just as Blogger was bought by Google, it sounds like proto-blogging software company Userland has a deal cooking with another major player. Or at least that is what Userland owner Dave Winer seems to be hinting when he writes: “I wouldn’t be surprised if the other popular blogging tools had similar deals cooking. Not much more to say at this time. Except…”

Also, it is worth noting that Jeff Jarvis is one of the wise people who helped keep Blogger afloat.

Ken Layne mentions that Google, the Internet’s most successful company, has bought Pyra, the company that owns Blogger.

Wow.

A Google spokesman says blogging is “a global self-publishing phenomenon that connects Internet users with dynamic, diverse points of view while also enabling comment and participation.”

Looks like Dave Winer is going to win his $1000 bet with NYTimes.com’s Martin Nisenholtz sooner rather than later. Last April Dave bet that “in a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times’ Web site.”

Google serves far more than the 150 million searches a day it admits publicly. And Google already serves far more people seeking New York information than does the New York Times.

Processing more than half all Internet searches, Google already has cornered the demand for information; with Blogger, it has a chance to dominate the supply as well.

Blogging… no… Internet publishing now moves beyond the beta-test.

Update: Cory Doctorow gives a good overview of Blogger history and suggests one future. And the New York Times reports on the deal and recycles the specious “150 million searches a day” number. AGGGG.

On a milder note, I noticed that Ken has been going to see UNR Wolf Pack college basketball games. We’ve also been enjoying college hoops this winter, watching the Amherst Jeff’s (20-3!) win three games. In contrast to Reno, the bleachers hold only 400 and there’s no beer… but seats are free. I haven’t watched division III college basketball in 20 years and amazed at how swift and muscular the action is. The shot clock and weight-lifting seem have transformed the game.

Slashdot is having a good free-for-all about power laws and communities. Do all communities (or networks) inevitably over-reward some participants and under-reward others? And, if this is true, do enough benefits accrue from the sorting to overshadow the unfair distribution of rewards? As one Slashdotter puts it: “Friend/foe systems, such as the one here at Slashdot, tend to actually make community better rather than worse.” I’ve chewed on this questionhere before.

Testing e-mail’s viral capacity, a ninth grader in Mississipi e-mailed 23 people on January 13 asking them to e-mail their location to her at howfastorfar2003@aol.com and to pass her message along to their friends. By February 5, the girl was getting 1000 e-mails every 29 minutes, one minute faster than she could download them. After Shannon mercy-killed her account, people tracked down her phone number and called to explain they couldn’t e-mail. Her total: 160,478 e-mails from 189 countries and 50 states. (WSJ password protected.)

We’re still absorbing the Internet’s true human scale. The world’s most trafficked tourist attraction, the Eiffel Tower, sells 2 tons of tickets a year. But its total traffic since 1889, 204 million people, is probably less than Google gets in a week.

I drove to Cambridge last night to attend a powpow convened by Dave Winer, the blogging innovator and evangelist who has been invited to agitate (or meditate?) at Harvard for a year.

Dave is as pugnacious in person as he is in pixels. He exhudes relish at his potential role as a blogging Socrates inside the crimson polis along the Charles River. Since blogging topples the walls that sustain entrenched geographic and geneological networks — and what is Harvard but a factory for networking elites? — I suggested that Dave may be a “jackhammer inside the Ivory Tower.” He responded that a good tower has room for a jackhammer.

Dave ran the meeting like a blog, bouncing around, cutting off wandering threads, even playfully browbeating one participant (“Bob”) who apparently regularly over-speaks around Dave. (“You only get to talk two times tonight Bob. Is this going to be one of them?”)

I learned more about RSS, and have to look more at the SMBmeta project, which involves creating a small-business-specific xml format.

Only two of the fifty-odd attendees were women. One of them, Donna Wentworth did a heroic job blogging the event. Dan Bricklin has posted a short account and photos of the event, including one I shot. His camera was incredible, making the room seem far brighter than it actually was. Dan says he gets 150 visitors a day to this page from Google for people looking for “home network 802.11b.” I suggested he sell blogads; in response, he joked “not unless I lose my job.”

Hylton Jolliffe quietly rounds up the different accounts of the event.

Ken Layne’s list of things to stockpile for the apocalypse includes: “500 lbs of ice. That should last a few days. 200 fresh oysters, beneath the ice. And a shucking gizmo. Condiments: lemons, Tabasco, horseradish, Tapatio, olive oil, etc…. Manual typewriter, index cards and a wind-up clock. Blogging will be impossible if it gets really bad. So I’ll just type my posts and do a time-stamp and pin the cards on the wall … in descending order.”

Publishing ads on nothing but his bare chest, web entrepreneur Chris Pirillo has netted $940 since January 22.

Chris, blogger, TechTV pundit and publisher of tech tips newletter Lockergnome, has sold 47 ads at $20 a piece.

If the formula for postmillennial publishing is low-overhead individually-generated content distributed to millions through the Internet, aka “the medium is me,” Chris takes the trend to an extreme.

Always eager to experience “thin media,” I Paypaled Chris $20 and bought an ad for Blogads. I also mailed Chris some questions:

> If you’ve got 10 minutes free, I’d love to ask you a few
> questions.

Feel free to ask more. 😉

It was inspired by several ideas, really. Chiefly, by something I did on the show I do every day for TechTV. I lifted up my overshirt and made reference to a video collection called “Girls Gone Wild.” One particular online community (Leoville) was rather upset at the message this might have been sending to young women. So, for my apology, I spelled out their web site on my chest and left it in my webcam for the world to see.

I also did it to prove that I could prove somebody wrong. He used the term “viral marketing” incorrectly, and instead of admonishing him publicly, I thought I’d illustrate my point by creating something that had stronger potential to go “viral.” It’s always a craps shoot, but the more zany an idea is, the more potential it has for spreading.

Beyond that, I’m just a goofy guy who loves to do goofy things. I’ve been doing goofy things for years, but this is the first one that had mass appeal. Although, I’m still not sure why.

> In brief: When did you start?

A couple of weeks ago (rentmychest.com was registered on January 22nd). I called up my buddy Jake Jake) and told him to register it and I’d explain it later. I’m nutty like that.

> How many ads have you sold?

I believe 47 at the time of this interview. That’s approximately US$940, not including PayPal fees. And yes, I do have a handful of repeat bustomers. One guy used it to freak out a close friend (in an innocent way), another guy is using it to promote his personal Web site, and a very close friend (Jodie Gastel) is using it to create awareness for her services at ScoreBrowniePoints.com. She reported record traffic, being the fourth bustomer, and came back for more.

> How many page views does Rentmychest.com get?

I don’t know. 😉 How’s that for a statistic?! I threw up a counter at the bottom of the page, and anybody should be able to click it to get more data. I guess I don’t care; I’m having far too much fun to get too serious about it.

> What is the best / worst advertiser feedback you’ve gotten?

Best? Jodie. She wanted to be the first bustomer, but she missed her opportunity, and then it didn’t matter… until the second and third sale trickled in. I finally convinced her to take the plunge. It paid off.

Worst? I can’t think of one. I’ve had no complaints so far. I’m writing crap on my chest, for chrissake. 😉 People pretty much know what they’re getting into, click-thrus or not.

> How does your wife feel about them?

She tolerates them, as she tolerates most of my stupid ideas. I don’t think she thought it was a “great” idea when I first proposed it, though. “You think people are going to pay for that?!” Yeah, I did. And yeah, they did. Who’s laughing now? Anybody who’s visited.

> Where are the photos taken?

Right here in my living room, where I have “geek central station” set up.

> With what camera?

It’s a Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000. It takes decent pictures for the job (640×480). I open my image editor, use TWAIN to capture the still, wash my chest, and move on to the next one.