Singing to a ripe old blogging age, whither the long tail, and misunderestimating the interwebtubes
A bunch of webby stories caught my eye this morning, in no particular order by rhymes nor reasons:
* World’s oldest blogger signs off singing aged 108 - “An Australian woman renowned as the world’s oldest blogger has died at the age of 108, with her last posting talking about her ailing health but also how she still sings a happy song every day.” Olive Riley blogged about her family, living through two world wars, and life in rural Australia. What an amazing thing, to be able to record a living history by means of blogging. And singing a happy tune at the age of 108? That would appear to be a life well lead.
* John McCain is learning how to use the internets: The New York Times quotes McCain: “I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself.” Now, I like McCain. He’s a bright and earnest and thoughtful guy. But in 2008, as a major party nominee for the United States of America, you have to be at least a little bit web savvy. This is a major chink in McCain’s armor, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it exploited in the months ahead. Potential debate questions: what are your favorite websites, candidates? What’s your take on net neutrality?
* Long Tails and Big Heads: Why Chris Anderson’s theory of the digital world might be all wrong - This story took me a little while to get my head around, largely because of my own personal takeaway on what the “long tail” means. In short, this piece questions whether a vibrant long tail can exist because even now at this stage of the Internet’s maturity there is still a huge market for “big hits” in music, movies, and books while the appetite for obscure items is still relatively small, even take in aggregate. My very short takeaway: the long tail remains a strong explanation for the long term trend of Internet consumption and commerce.
And here’s a few bonus stories for y’all:
* Enterprises become the battleground for social networking - I kind of think that 2005-2007 or so was the era that social networking was really interesting to look at as a space. The “battleground” has moved on to the enterprise arena.
* Is Digg Looking to Sell to the Guardian? - Somewhat misleading title as the story goes on to explain that there’s no evidence whatever that Digg is looking to sell. However, there’s lots of potential Digg acquisition gossip going on, so will be interesting to see if fire ever does appear amidst the smoke.
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