NETWORK EFFECT

Now anyone can be a news service, and is. The beauty of microblogs is that no matter where feeds are published, you can use any IM client to get your favorite alerts. Younger folks who literally live in their IM client can easily get news, but even if you are of the old guard and use email as your dashboard, gmail’s built-in IM client allows anyone to get their news alerts without navigating away from email.

Dave Winer and Steve Rubel have noted that RSS feeds should be attended to individually, some as “a river(s) of news” and others requiring special prioritization in your reader. Because Twitter updates are sent out instantaneously, those river-like feeds that do not require constant attention can flow right by in IM, provided that they have a microblog feed you can subscribe to.

Back in May, Twitterfacts posted some news shops that have their own Twitter feeds. I have found that they are all not being updated with regularity, but I can only assume that as subscriptions to Twitter reach critical mass, these orgs will find their new path.

Looking for Web 3.0? Go no further. We are entering a third age in which the government and healthcare gets blown apart (in a good way) and rebuilt from scratch. Watch the video for details of one project that is breaking ground in congress. But, this is really just the beginning.

We really don’t need no steenkin’ badges!

This is rich. Don’t you love paywalls? Just came across a Wall Street Journal article on Burma that is over at their site. It appears to be a plea from First lady, Laura Bush, about Burma. Looks like it could be an influential opinion piece at the right time. The only trouble is, the WSJ makes it only available to subscribers. It might have been a little more popular had it not.

WSJ, I suggest that if you are going to have a paywall, at least make enlightening human rights articles accessible to anyone, without registration.

The stars are aligning for business adoption of social media.

Fasten your seatbelts.