Been a busy week, with more ideas for blog entries than time to write them. Here are some of the things I wanted to write about this week but didn’t get to:

Facebook Toast? Hot Today, Dead Tomorrow–Like AOL?

Article from Silicon Alley Insider on some of Facebook’s challenges. I “get” Facebook conceptually. I see the power. But on a personal level I’ve never truly enjoyed it. To me the whole idea of going to some closed destination site every day just seems kind of old fashioned and doesn’t fit the way I want to use technology. From the article, it sounds like at least a few others are with me.

A Sneak Peak at WordPress 2.5

The WordPress folks have put out their first release candidate for version 2.5. It looks promising. Hopefully they’ll have a final release ready in the next few months.

McCain Aide Suspended Over Video Forward

McCain aide Soren Dayton was suspended yesterday for linking to an anti-Obama video from his Twitter account. Townhall, Mike Turk , William Beutler and Patrick Ruffini all have good posts up on the matter. I would just add that if you work on a Presidential campaign, you should realize you are a public figure and have pretty much given up your right to free speech and privacy online. Shutter the blog. Close the Twitter account. Stop posting embarrassing pictures to Facebook. People are watching.

One Mission, Two Newsrooms

A great article from Washington City Paper on the divide between the .com and print sides of the Washington Post.

YouTube API enables free web hosting for all

“YouTube has launched a powerful API that enables publishers to broadcast video content using their own skin and specifications direct from their own web sites–free. The co-branded API is being pitched at businesses, but also threatens the many video providers that service the custom-player market.”

I’ve been hesitant to use YouTube for video hosting due to (1) poor quality and (2) heavy YouTube branding of the player (huge logo, very grey, etc.). Blip.tv has been my host provider of choice for the last year because it is far superior to YouTube in terms of quality and the flexibility of the player (the player is beautiful). The release of this API is a good reason to give YouTube a look as a primary video host instead of just as a distribution channel, which is how I see it now.

State of the News Media 2008

Interesting report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism. A snippet from the intro to whet your appetite.

Critics have tended to see technology democratizing the media and traditional journalism in decline. Audiences, they say, are fragmenting across new information sources, breaking the grip of media elites. Some people even advocate the notion of “The Long Tail,” the idea that, with the Web’s infinite potential for depth, millions of niche markets could be bigger than the old mass market dominated by large companies and producers.

The reality, increasingly, appears more complex. Looking closely, a clear case for democratization is harder to make. Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before. Online, for instance, the top 10 news Web sites, drawing mostly from old brands, are more of an oligarchy, commanding a larger share of audience, than in the legacy media. The verdict on citizen media for now suggests limitations. And research shows blogs and public affairs Web sites attract a smaller audience than expected and are produced by people with even more elite backgrounds than journalists.